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A PRIMER 


OF 


American Literature. 


BY 


CHARLES F. RICHARDSON. 


New and Revised Edition, with Twelve Portraits 
of American Authors. 

TWENTY-FIRST THOUSAND 



BOSTON: 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 
11 East Seventeenth Street, New York. 

®Ije Ifttbersitie press, (Eatn&rtKge. 

1884. 



Copyright, 1878 and 1883, 

By CHARLES F. RICHARDSON. 


All rights reserved. 


Bequest 

Albert Adsit Clemons 
Aug. 24, 1938 
(Not available for exchange) 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 







CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

1620-1775. 

PAGE 

1. The Beginning.7 

2. The Theological Era.9 

3. Increase and Cotton Mather . . . .10 

4. Eliot’s Indian Bible.12 

5. Roger Williams.13 

6. Minor Writers of the Seventeenth Century 14 

7. Yale College.15 

8. Jonathan Edwards.16 

9. The Followers of Edwards . . . . 17 

10. Benjamin Franklin.18 

11. Franklin as a Writer.20 

12. Franklin as a Scientist and Diplomatist. . 21 

13. Minor Writers of the Eighteenth Century 21 

CHAPTER II. 

I 775 - I 8 i 2 . 

1. The Revolutionary Period.23 

2. George Washington as a Writer . . .24 

3. Thomas Jefferson.24 

4. The Federalist.25 





IV 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

5. Thomas Paine.26 

6. Poets.27 

7. The First Novelist.28 

8. Historians and Other Writers . . . .28 


CHAPTER III. 

1812-1861. 


1. Theological Changes.30 

2. William Ellery Channing.32 

3. Other Theological Writers .... 34 

4. The Knickerbocker School.38 

5. Washington Irving.38 

6. James Kirke Paulding.43 

7. Joseph Rodman Drake.44 

8. Fitz-Greene Halleck.45 

9. Other Early Poets.46 

10. William Cullen Bryant .48 

11. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . . . 50 

12. Longfellow’s Poems.52 

13. Longfellow’s Prose Works .... 54 

14. Longfellow’s Dante.55 

15. John Greenleaf Whittier.55 

16. Holmes’s Poems.58 

17. Holmes’s Prose Works.59 

18. James Russell Lowell.60 

19. Edgar Allan Poe.63 

20. Other Poets .63 

21. Orators.66 

22. Historians.66 

23. Richard Hildreth.66 

24. George Bancroft.67 

25. John Gorham Palfrey.68 













CONTENTS . 


V 


• PAGE 

26. William Hickling Prescott.68 

27. John Lothrop Motley.69 

28. Other Historians,.70 

29. Travellers . 7I 

30. Fiction — James Fenimore Cooper . . .71 

31. Nathaniel Hawthorne. 74 

32. Other Novelists.77 

33. Emerson and the Concord Authors . . 79 

34. Miscellaneous Writers.82 

35. Scientific and Special Writers ... 84 

CHAPTER IV. 

AFTER l86l. 

1. Literature of the Civil War . . . .86 

2. Poets.88 

3. Bayard Taylor.89 

4. Richard Henry Stoddard.90 

5. John Godfrey Saxe .90 

6. John Townsend Trowbridge .... 91 

7. Walt Whitman .91 

8. Joaquin Miller.92 

9. Francis Bret Harte.93 

10. John Hay.'93 

11. Thomas Bailey Aldrich.94 

12. Edmund Clarence Stedman .... 95 

13. The Piatts.96 

14. Other Poets.97 

15. William Dean Howells.98 

16. Theodore Winthrop.100 

17. Edward Eggleston.100 

18. Julian Hawthorne.101 

19. Henry James, Jr.101 















VI 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

20. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.102 

21. Louisa May Alcott.103 

22. Harriet Prescott Spofford .... 103 

23. Other Novelists.103 

24. American Humor.105 

25. Charles Dudley Warner.108 

26. James Parton . . . . . . . • 108 

27. Edward E. Hale.109 

28. Thomas Wentworth Higginson . . . 109 

29. Miscellaneous Writers .no 


PORTRAITS. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ..... i 


John Greenleaf Whittier 
Oliver Wendell Holmes 
James Russell Lowell 
James Fenimore Cooper . 
Nathaniel Hawthorne 
Harriet Beecher Stowe 
Ralph Waldo Emerson 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
William Dean Howells . 
Henry James, Jr. . . 
Charles Dudley Warner . 


. . . . . 56 

.58 

.60 

.72 

.74 

. . . . . 78 

.80 

.94 

.98 

.102 

. • • • • 108 



A PRIMER 


OF 

AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER I. 

1620-1775. 

1. The Beginning. —As soon as the English 
colonists landed on American shores, at James¬ 
town and Plymouth, they began to think of the 
establishment of schools of sound learning: in Vir¬ 
ginia for the purpose of educating the Indians, and 
in Massachusetts Bay for the supply of church 
pastors. By 1619 the proposed Virginia university 
possessed, as gifts from English donors, fifteen 
thousand acres of land and fifteen hundred pounds 
in money, and its early establishment at Henrico, 
on the James River, was prevented only by a gen¬ 
eral Indian massacre on March 22, 1622, when 
three hundred and forty persons, including the su¬ 
perintendent of the university, lost their lives. 
Nothing further was done toward establishing a 
Virginia college until 1660, and the College of 



8 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE . 

William and Mary, the outcome of the original 
idea, did not receive its charter until 1693. The 
Puritans of Massachusetts were more fortunate and 
more prudent than the Cavaliers of Virginia, for 
they suffered no loss by any extensive massacre, 
and they depended upon themselves instead of 
looking for help from England, where, indeed, they 
had few friends. Their “ school or college ” at 
Newtown (Cambridge) was begun in 1636 with 
only four hundred pounds in money, but two years 
later it received a sum amounting, it is supposed, 
to seven or eight hundred pounds, together with 
a respectable library, by the will of John Harvard, 
the young Charlestown minister whose name Har¬ 
vard University now bears. From that time its 
income was small but sure, and its existence during 
the latter part of the seventeenth century did much 
to give Massachusetts the literary start which the 
greater wealth and the imported instructors of the 
Virginia institution could not offset. In both colo¬ 
nies, however, schools, and their inevitable result, 
book-making, appeared with creditable promptness; 
and those colonists who first taught or wrote have 
their posthumous reward in the most vigorous off¬ 
shoot that the literature of any nation has ever 
been able to put forth. American literature has a 
right to a share in the heritage of the countrymen 
of Caedmon and Chaucer and Shakespeare; but 
its enforced independence and its familiarity with 


THE THEOLOGICAL ERA . 9 

new surroundings have given it character and 
deserts of its own. 

2. The Theological Era. — At the outset Amer¬ 
ican literature was imitative ; the first writers were 
of English birth and education, and the early col¬ 
leges were closely fashioned after the Oxford and 
Cambridge pattern, in which divinity and the “hu¬ 
manities ” held the first place. The settlers of 
Massachusetts were men who had fought and suf¬ 
fered for their religious opinions, and they naturally 
held them with considerable firmness, as opposed to 
the Church of England on the one hand, and the 
Baptists and Quakers on the other. So long as the 
influence of the Puritans and their descendants was 
predominant, it was natural that the affairs of the 
soul should be uppermost; and not until politics 
began to interest the colonists in a vital manner did 
religious books and tracts cease to form the bulk of 
the issues of the press. Novels and plays were 
unknown ; poetry was didactic, devotional, or satiri¬ 
cal ; histories were prejudiced by the theological 
opinions of their writers; and philosophy became 
an important study only as a means of religious 
defence. One of the very first issues of the print¬ 
ing-press set up at Cambridge in 1639 was the Bay 
Psalm Book , a metrical version mainly written by 
New England divines. This was the first book 
written and printed at home, for though George 
Sandys, an English gentleman connected with the 


10 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE . 


Virginia company, had made, on the banks of the 
James River, a tolerable translation of Ovid, he 
printed it in London. 

3. Increase and Cotton Mather. — Nearly 
every minister who had anything to say and the 
means of getting it printed wrote a pamphlet or 
two. The titles were often of great length. The 
Application of Rede 77 iption by the Effectual Work of 
the Word a 7 id Spirit of Christ was as brief as the 
average; and the interest excited in such works is 
shown by the fact that this treatise reached a sec¬ 
ond edition after the death of the author, the Rev. 
Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. Of all 
the theological writers of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, Increase Mather and his son 
Cotton were the most voluminous. The publica¬ 
tions of the former numbered eighty-five, and of the 
latter no less than three hundred and eighty-two. 
Increase Mather was born at Dorchester, and grad¬ 
uated at Harvard in 1656, though he deemed an 
additional European training necessary, and took a 
degree at Dublin two years later. He was presi¬ 
dent of Harvard between 1685 and 1701, and had 
some success in his efforts to be preacher, diplomat, 
and educator at the same time. His writings have 
little literary value. Cotton Mather inherited all 
his father’s zeal, together with the bookish tastes of 
his grandfather, John Cotton, of the First Church in 
Boston. Cotton Mather graduated at Harvard in 


INCREASE AND COTTON MATHER. 


II 


1678, and, having overcome a painful habit of stam¬ 
mering, became his father’s colleague in the North 
Church, Boston, in 1684. The youth was then only 
twenty-one years of age, but his head had been 
crammed with as much knowledge as John Milton’s. 
At twelve he was well along in Hebrew, and had 
mastered the leading Latin and Greek authors; and 
his daily life was from the first a wonderful piece of 
systematic machinery. Mather was a firm supporter 
of the doctrines of extreme Calvinistic theology, and 
to him devils and angels were as real as his own 
family. In witchcraft he fully believed, in common 
with most of the wise men of his time; and his first 
important book, Memorable Providences relating to 
Witchcraft, appeared in 1689, three years before the 
Salem executions, which Mather justified. The 
Wonders of the Invisible World, issued in 1693, gives 
an account of these executions, without any attempt 
at compassion, or any intimation that human beings, 
and not evil spirits, were being put to death. And 
yet this cold, stern man was a life-long worker for 
sailors, prisoners, Indians, and all the suffering and 
oppressed. Mather wrote on a multitude of sub¬ 
jects, but the work on which his reputation chiefly 
rests is the Magnalia Christi Americana, published 
in London in 1702,— a vast storehouse of ecclesi¬ 
astical, civil, and educational history, together with 
many biographical sketches. As a collection of 
facts it is an authority; and in those passages 


12 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE . 


which are colored by the writer’s prejudices it is 
easy to detach the true from the false. Mather 
died in 1728, and left a great gap in the literature 
and theology of the time. By his side the other 
early clergymen of New England, with two excep¬ 
tions, must take an inferior place, for they equalled 
him in zeal and fertility, but not in ability. 

4. Eliot’s Indian Bible. — John Eliot, the 
“Apostle to the Indians,” was born in England 
and educated at the University of Cambridge, 
coming to Boston in 1631, and accepting as his 
life-mission, the next year, the conversion of the 
Indians, who were evidently, in his opinion, the 
descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Having 
learned the language by the aid of an Indian 
servant in his family, he began preaching in No- 
nantum, now Newton, in 1646. Threats did not 
affect him, and little churches of natives were 
slowly gathered in the Massachusetts Bay and 
Plymouth colonies, twenty-four of his converts aid¬ 
ing the industrious Eliot in carrying them on. He 
had troubles with the colonists, whom he deterred 
from extirpating the Indians in 1675, an d whom 
he offended by his Christian Commonwealth, pub¬ 
lished in England in 1660,— a work against which 
seditious intent was charged. Eliot wrote an Eng¬ 
lish harmony of the Gospels, an Indian grammar, 
2nd some lesser works; but his chief monument 
of industry and scholarship is his translation of the 


ROGER WILLIAMS. 


13 


entire Bible into the Indian tongue. This appeared 
in two parts, the New Testament in 1661, and the 
whole Bible in 1663, and was the labor of the un¬ 
aided Eliot. Its dialect is now unknown save to 
an antiquary or two. This work is also noticeable 
as the first Bible, in any language, printed in British 
America, and still remains one of the most remark¬ 
able contributions to philology made in this country, 
though its value as a Christianizing agent was of 
course temporary. 

5. Roger Williams. —The Puritans, although 
they were in a majority, and controlled religious 
and social affairs in New England with an iron 
hand, were not without opponents. Of these, 
Roger Williams, a Church of England clergyman 
who had become a non-conformist just before sail¬ 
ing for America, in 1630, was the most prominent. 
For five years he was in every way a political and 
theological thorn in the side of the colony, though 
many of his principles were thoroughly in accord 
with what is now considered truth and progress. 
To escape banishment to England he went, with 
four followers, to the site of the present city of 
Providence, and set up a community in which secu¬ 
lar and religious affairs were divorced. Becoming 
a Baptist in 1639, he founded a church the same 
year, which he quitted after a few months. The 
remainder of his life was mainly spent in Provi¬ 
dence, though he lived in London for some time, 


14 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE . 

where he was surprised to find John Milton as ver¬ 
satile as himself, and considerably more profound. 
The Quakers were freely admitted to Providence, 
but Williams and George Fox carried on sharp con¬ 
troversies, and the former willingly engaged in 
public debate with the Quaker champion. His 
Bloody Tenent of Persecution , Hireling Ministry none 
of Christ's and Experiments of Spiritual Life and 
Health are his principal works, but their present 
value is not great. Williams’s whole career shows 
what a man of sincerity and force can accomplish, 
though his powers be hindered by a certain insta¬ 
bility and superficiality. 

6 . Minor Writers of the Seventeenth Cen¬ 
tury. — Captain John Smith was a voluminous but 
untrustworthy narrator of his own adventures. 
Nathaniel Ward, minister at Ipswich, published in 
1647 a sharp satire on English social life, called 
The Simple Cobbler of Agawam. Governor John 
Winthrop’s valuable history of New England, in the 
form of a journal between 1630 and 1649, was not 
fully published until 1826. The manuscript of 
another governor’s journal, William Bradford’s His¬ 
tory of Plymouth Plantation (1602-1646), a still 
abler work, was lost until 1855, and first completely 
published in 1856. It had formed the basis of 
Nathaniel Morton’s New England's Memorial, 1669. 
The honor of the first publication of a volume of 
poems in New England belongs to Anne Bradstreet, 



YALE COLLEGE. 


15 


whose collected works appeared in 1678. Some of 
the poems are by no means devoid of merit, though 
disfigured by a paucity of words and a stiffness of 
style. Peter Folger, Benjamin Franklin’s * grand¬ 
father, also wrote a long doggerel entitled A Look¬ 
ing Glass for the Times. It was hard to write any¬ 
thing but doggerel so long as the current versions 
of the Psalms were in vogue. Michael Wiggles- 
worth’s Day of Doom (1662) is a solemn poem on 
the day of judgment, with some strong lines, one of 
which devotes to non-elect infants “the easiest 
room in hell.” It was very popular in its day, run¬ 
ning through nine editions in America and two in 
England. 

7. Yale College. — In the year 1700 some Con¬ 
necticut ministers met at New Haven, and talked 
over the plan of establishing a college in the 
colony, a subject which had been broached as early 
as 1647. Meeting again in Branford the same 
year, they deposited forty books on a table, each 
declaring as he laid down his parcel, “ I give these 
books for the founding a college in this colony.” 
In its early years the new institution led a wander¬ 
ing and not altogether peaceful life at Killingworth, 
Saybrook, and Milford, but was finally located in 
New Haven in 1716. The Saybrook Platform 
(Congregational) had been made binding on the 
officers in 1708. The religious teaching of the 
college was somewhat more conservative than that 


16 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN - LITERATURE . 

at Harvard, even in the eighteenth century; but 
the publications of its officers and graduates were 
fewer, partly in consequence of the lack of a pub¬ 
lishing centre in the colony. Philosophy, however, 
was from the first a prominent study, and to this 
fact is due, in some measure, the subsequent career 
of the most eminent of American metaphysicians. 

8. Jonathan Edwards was born in East Wind¬ 
sor, Connecticut, in 1703, graduated at Yale in 
1720, was a tutor there between 1724 and 1726, 
was pastor in Northampton and Stockbridge, and 
was elected president of the College of New Jersey 
at Princeton, in 1757, dying there in March of 
the next year, after holding office less than three 
months. As a mere youth he began the study of 
mental science, and took up the task of showing 
the harmony between the Calvinistic theology and 
the conclusions of philosophy. Locke he mastered 
at thirteen, and afterwards studied all other acces¬ 
sible authorities; but Locke’s influence was always 
strong in his mind. In-1746 he wrote a Treatise on 
the Religious Affections, in which he showed what 
were the marks of true religion. An Inquiry into 
the Qualifications for Full Com?nunion followed; a 
work in which he laid down the principle, since 
maintained in the New England Congregational 
churches, that true conversion and a correct life 
should be requisites for admission to the Lord’s 
Supper. This opinion was not shared by his 


THE FOLLOWERS OF EDWARDS. 


1 7 


Northampton church, and he was compelled to 
leave it and accept the duties of missionary to 
the Stockbridge Indians. In Stockbridge, between 
1751 and 1754, he wrote his great treatise on the 
freedom of the will, the full title of which was A 
Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Notion 
of that Freedom of Will which is supposed to be essen¬ 
tial to Moral Agency , Virtue and Vice , Reward and 
Punishment , Praise and Blame. His other works 
were not few, but upon this chiefly rests his repu¬ 
tation as philosopher and theologian. It was 
designed to show that Calvinistic notions of God’s 
moral government are not contrary to the common- 
sense of mankind, but in strict consonance there¬ 
with. Edwards maintained that the will is not 
self-determined, and that the assertion of absence 
of certainty in the universe is inconsistent with any 
correct idea of a ruling power. Some English 
necessitarians promptly hailed Edwards as one of 
their number, but he repudiated the connection, 
and declared that man’s sinful disposition was 
man’s greatest sin, far from being an excuse for 
wrong-doing. From its first appearance until the 
present time the treatise has been the subject of 
sharp criticism, both by Calvinists and Arminians, 
but it has been supported by some of the ablest of 
American divines. 

9. The Followers of Edwards. — The principal 
leaders, in the eighteenth century, of the school of 


1 8 A PRIMER OF A ME RICA AT LITERATURE. 

philosophy which Edwards shaped were Samuel 
Hopkins, Nathaniel Emmons, and Timothy Dwight. 
Hopkins studied theology under Edwards, of whom 
he published a biography. His System of Theology 
appeared in 1793, and “ Hopkinsianism ” was a 
common term in New England for many years. 
Hopkins was one of the first to oppose slavery; 
he caused it to be abolished in Rhode Island, and 
formed a plan for colonizing and evangelizing 
Africa with free negroes. Emmons was pastor of 
a church in Franklin, Massachusetts, from 1773 to 
1840, and his writings were in substantial accord 
with those of Dr. Hopkins. Timothy Dwight was 
president of Yale between 1795 and 1817 His 
Theology Explained and Defended (1818) consisted 
of one hundred and seventy-three sermons. While 
adhering in the main to the principles of Edwards, 
he dissented in minor points, and considerably 
popularized the system. Dr. Dwight, who was one 
of the most accomplished scholars of his time, also 
wrote poetry and a book of travels, though his ex¬ 
plorations extended no farther than New England 
and New York. 

10. Benjamin Franklin.— The eighteenth cen¬ 
tury had now become rich in the names of great 
Americans, one of the most remarkable of whom 
was Benjamin Franklin, who had all the versatility 
of Roger Williams and Increase Mather, and was 
a master in whatever branch of learning he touched. 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 


19 


Franklin, the fifteenth of a family of seventeen 
children, was born in Boston in 1706, his father 
being a tallow-chandler and his mother the daugh¬ 
ter of Peter Folger, a man of some literary ability. 
Early apprenticed to his brother James as a printer, 
Franklin read everything he could lay hands upon, 
and was especially fond of Addison’s Spectator , then 
a great favorite and a novelty. The itch for writing 
was soon manifest, and he began to print pieces 
on public affairs in The New Engla 7 id Courant, 
his brother’s newspaper. The people read and 
liked them, but they caused a disagreement with 
his brother, and in 1723 young Franklin ran away 
to New York and Philadelphia, where he went to 
work as a journeyman printer. In 1730 he bought 
the Pennsylvania Gazette , then two years old, and 
soon became a power in politics, literature, and 
! society. Through his efforts a library was started 
j in Philadelphia in 1731 ; the American Philosoph¬ 
ical Society in 1743, and the Academy of Philadel¬ 
phia, afterwards the University of Pennsylvania, in 
1749. In 1753 he became postmaster-general for 
the colonies, and was frequently commissioner be¬ 
tween them and England. In 1766 he secured the 
repeal of the obnoxious Stamp Act; in 1775 he 
went to the Continental Congress; and in 1776 he 
helped to draft the Declaration of Independence, 
which he signed. Between that year and 1785 he 
was employed abroad in various diplomatic func- 




20 A PRIMER OF A MERIC AH LITER A TURE. 

tions, returning in time to be a delegate to the Con¬ 
stitutional Convention in 1787. He died at Phila¬ 
delphia in 1790. • 

11. Franklin as a Writer. — A Dissertation on 
Liberty and Necessity was printed by Franklin in 
London in 1725, during a temporary residence in 
that city, being a reply to a work by William ij 
Wollaston on which the young printer was setting 
type. In 1732 Franklin began, in Philadelphia, 
the publication of Poor Richard's Almanac , the 
issue of which was continued for twenty-five years. 

“ Richard Saunders, Philomath ” was the professed 
author, and Benjamin Franklin was the printer. 
The principal part of the almanac was a collection 
of saws and sayings, which were eagerly awaited 
by the people, and promptly passed into current 
circulation. The inculcation of practices of pru¬ 
dence and economy was always a leading idea in 
these maxims, and they had a prompt effect in 
increasing the amount of spare money in Phila¬ 
delphia. Besides these, the almanacs contained 
jocose introductions and doggerel rhymes for each 
month. The annual sale was about ten thousand 
copies, but they were so worn out by their homely 
readers that copies of the earlier issues are scarce. 
The most of Franklin’s other writings consisted of 
miscellaneous and random, but by no means hasty, 
papers on political, financial, social, and scientific 
subjects, all of which have been preserved. The 




I MINOR WRITERS: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 21 

Busybody, a series of essays in Addisonian style, 
! and some ballads written in early life, should also 
be mentioned. Franklin was an admirable letter- 
writer, and in his correspondence a perfect picture 
of the man is presented. If anything further were 
needed to complete our idea of his personality, it is 
supplied in his Autobiography. 

12 . Franklin as a Scientist and Diploma¬ 
tist. — To Franklin belongs the honor of showing 
that lightning is electricity, and the invention of 
the lightning-rod. About the year 1750 he fore¬ 
shadowed this discovery in his letters, and was 
elected a fellow of the Royal Society in conse¬ 
quence of his papers on the subject. In foreign 
courts his influence was largely due to personal 
power, but as a political writer he is clear and 
cogent. 

13. Minor Writers of the Eighteenth Cen¬ 
tury. — An excellent History of the First Discovery 
and Settlement of Virginia was published in 1747 
by William Stith, afterwards president of William 
and Mary College. David Brainerd, a missionary 
to the Indians of New England and New York, kept 
a diary, which was issued after his death, and is an 
interesting history of the life of a sensitive, indus¬ 
trious, and devout man. These memoirs were 
edited by Jonathan Edwards. John Woolman, an 
itinerant Quaker, born in New Jersey, wrote little, 
his principal literary production being, like Brain- 





22 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

erd’s, in the form of personal recollections. His 
Journal of Life and Travels in the Service of the 
Gospel appeared in 1774, three years after his 
death. It is a charming book. Thomas Prince, 
a minister of the Old South Church, Boston, from 
1718 to 1758, planned a Chronological History of 
New England, in the form of annals, from 1603 to 
1730, but only brought the work down to 1633. It 
was his intention to present a bare chronicle of 
facts, but in passages he rose to a certain elo¬ 
quence of historic portrayal. Chief Justice Samuel 
Sewall, of Boston, was a prominent man in the 
colony, and wrote several books; his best literary 
work, however, was his full Diary from 1674 to 
1729, first published by the Massachusetts Histori¬ 
cal Society in 1878-1881. Sincere, graphic, devout, 
and shrewd, these note-books of Judge SewalPs 
present an important picture of Puritan life in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and are the 
most remarkable contribution ever made by a diarist 
to American social history. 


CHAPTER II. 


1775-1812. 

1. The Revolutionary Period. — The American 
Revolution was the cause of much commotion in 
literature as well as in politics, being preceded, 
attended, and followed by great activity of the pen. 
A large part of the books and pamphlets written 
at the time were necessarily of temporary interest 
and of slight value as literature. But such of the 
speeches, delivered during or before the meeting of 
the Continental Congress, as have come down to 
us are marked by the fire and intensity of an ear¬ 
nest period. James Otis, of Boston, born in 1725^ 
was the author of some vigorous pamphlets, and 
was a wonderful orator. A few fragments of his 
speeches have been preserved, but the one which is 
most familiar to school-boys is an avowed modern 
imitation. Josiah Quincy, Jr. (1744-1775), shared 
with Otis, in Massachusetts, the oratorical honors 
of the time. John Adams wrote some powerful 
pamphlets, and Patrick Henry, like Otis, deserves 
literary mention for the fervid eloquence and artis¬ 
tic finish of his speeches. Henry edited an edition 
of Bishop Butler’s Analogy of Religion. 


24 A PRIMER OF AMERICA AT LITER A TURE . 

2. George Washington as a Writer. —Though 
Washington at no time in his life paid particular 
attention to the arts of rhetoric, he was the master 
of a clear and somewhat individual style. Without 
including many productions of special interest, his 
literary remains are sufficient to fill twelve large 
volumes. The journal of his expedition to the 
Ohio River was published at Williamsburg, Virginia, 
in 1754, and his Farewell Address in 1796,— a pro¬ 
duction which would alone entitle the writer to 
mention among American authors. The rest of 
his collected works consist of addresses, messages, 
and correspondence. As a letter-writer Washington 
excelled, like Franklin; and during his life-time 
he was compelled to make out a list of spurious 
letters attributed to him, the popularity of his 
correspondence having led to such forgeries. 

3. Thomas Jefferson was probably the best 
educated man of his time, having been fortunate 
in his instructors and zealous in the prosecution 
of his studies. Many branches of learning he had 
pursued beyond the usual limit, and he excelled in 
literary composition, though he was no orator. His 
JVotes on Virginia were written for the information 
of the French government, and were published 
in 1784. They include many shrewd observations 
and interesting suggestions. Jefferson’s somewhat 
voluminous correspondence may be considered his 
most graceful literary monument, though the Decla- 


THE FEDERALIST. 


25 


ration of Independence, which he wrote, will always 
be considered one of the most remarkable of public 
documents, aside from its political importance. 

4. The Federalist was a collection of essays 
published periodically, and arguing in favor of the 
Constitution of the United States, adopted in 1789. 
There were eighty-five numbers in all, of which the 
first seventy-six appeared in The Ijidependent Journal , 
a semi-weekly newspaper published in New York. 
The publication began on October 27, 1787, and 
ceased, as far as the journal was concerned, on 
April 2, 1788. The Federalist was the concerted 
work of Alexander Hamilton, James .Madison, and 
John Jay, who adopted no separate signatures, but 
wrote over the common signature of Publius. The 
letters were addressed to the people of New York, 
in order to induce that State to support the pro¬ 
posed national Constitution. The purpose of the 
publication was controversial, for the Constitution 
had been so sharply attacked that its friends per¬ 
ceived the necessity of rallying to its defence. The 
original idea was Hamilton’s, and he drew up the 
plan of the series. The completed work does not 
form a systematic treatise, but covers many ques¬ 
tions of government which every student of political 
science must consider. The authors had a special 
end in view, and they were zealous to show the 
colonists that advantage and danger united in de¬ 
manding the adoption of a Federal Constitution. In 


2 6 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


the light of later experience the wisdom and fore¬ 
thought of the writers are apparent. The work has 
been repeatedly issued, and is recognized as a 
standard authority on the elementary principles of 
government. 

5. Thomas Paine was a prominent figure in Rev¬ 
olutionary literature. Born in England in 1737, he 
started in life as a stay-maker and dissenting 
preacher, meanwhile getting a general knowledge 
of literature by such promiscuous reading as he 
could do at odd moments. Becoming angry with 
the British government in consequence of his dis¬ 
missal from the revenue service, he came to America 
in 1774 and obtained speedy notoriety as a political 
writer. His Serious Thoughts on Slavery was a 
magazine article printed in 1775. Common Sense , 
a political pamphlet, advocating a declaration of 
independence and the formation of a republic, had 
a vast circulation, and exerted no small influence. 
At the end of 1776 Paine started a periodical 
called The Crisis , which was published, at no stated 
interval, for some time, and had a multitude of 
readers. His patriotic services during the war were 
appreciated and rewarded, though his temper got 
him into occasional trouble. The Rights of Man, a 
vindication of the French Revolution, appeared in 
1791 and 1792, and he wrote The Age of Reason in 
1794 and 1795, partly in a French prison. The 
latter work has always had a wide circulation, 


POETS. 


2 7 


chiefly among the lower classes. It advocates a 
pure deism, but its method of criticism and temper 
of attack are now generally repudiated by more 
scholarly writers of the same school. 

6. Poets. — Philip Freneau, a Huguenot by de¬ 
scent and a New Yorker by birth, was the first 
American poet to attain eminence, though there 
were a multitude of anonymous ballad-writers dur¬ 
ing the war. Freneau graduated at the College of 
New Jersey in 1771, studying at that institution 
with James Madison. He published four volumes, 
and his political burlesques were very popular dur¬ 
ing the war. Probably he was the first American 
poet to find readers in England. John Trumbull’s 
Progress of Dullness and Elegy on the Times attracted 
no great attention; but his McFingal (1782), a 
satirical poem in the style of Butler’s Hudibras , 
had a great circulation. Some of its lines are still 
popularly assigned to Butler. Francis Hopkinson 
and Robert Treat Paine, Jr., were other patriotic 
and humorous versifiers. Joel Barlow’s Vision of 
Columbus (1787) was for a time a favorite, and his 
graver Colwnbiad, an expansion of the preceding, 
issued in 1808, was the first attempt at a national 
epic. It is stiff and stately, but occasionally rises 
into merit. Barlow is better known by a poem on 
“hasty-pudding.” Phillis Wheatley, a Massachu¬ 
setts negress, published a volume of verse in Lon¬ 
don in 1773; and Dr. James McClurg, of Virginia, 


28 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

wrote graceful poems of compliment. But all the 
American poetry of the time, even the most patri¬ 
otic, was in humble imitation of English models. 

7. The First Novelist. — Charles Brockden 
Brown’s JVieland, , printed in 1798, introduced fic¬ 
tion into American literature. The slow appear¬ 
ance of the novel was not strange, for, with the 
exception of De Foe, the English novelists them¬ 
selves had failed to win much celebrity before the 
latter half of the eighteenth century. Ormond was 
Brown’s second novel, and the two books received 
prompt approval. Arthur Mervyn , the third novel, 
was equally successful, and a better story than 
either. All Brown’s stories are told in a graphic 
style, and their author had no lack of imagination. 
Later writers have supplanted him, and the prevail¬ 
ing impression of gloom left by his books has not 
served to make them permanent favorites. Brown, 
it should be added, started a monthly magazine, 
and was the first of our authors to make his whole 
living out of literature. 

8. Historians and Other Writers. — The his¬ 
tories written during the last century are chiefly 
useful as authorities for later writers. David Ram¬ 
say prepared works of some value. Jeremy Belknap 
wrote a History of New Hampshire and a useful 
series of biographies. Hannah Adams’s History of 
New England was the first standard book written 
by a New England woman, but its merit does not 


ms TORI A NS AND OTHER WRITERS. 29 


leave this fact as its only distinction. Dr. Abiel 
Holmes’s Annals of America is of service as a sys¬ 
tematic compilation of leading events. In biog¬ 
raphy, William Wirt wrote a readable life of Patrick 
Henry; and Chief Justice John Marshall prepared 
a standard life of Washington. John Ledyard, a 
daring explorer, started the fashion for travel by 
publishing the records of his exploits. Scientific 
research was given a start by the writings of Dr. 
Benjamin Rush in medicine, Alexander Wilson in 
ornithology, Samuel Latham Mitchill in chemistry, 
Benjamin Smith Barton in botany, and Benjamin 
Thompson, Count Rumford, in physics. Some of 
the writers of this time would not attract attention 
nowadays, and not all, even, of those here men¬ 
tioned, wrote as well as later authors whose names 
will be necessarily omitted in this book. Washing¬ 
ton Irving once jocosely said of himself that he 
attracted attention because Englishmen were sur¬ 
prised to see an American with a quill in his hand 
and not on his head. But greater credit always 
belongs to the pioneer; and it must be remembered 
that many authors of the eighteenth century wrote 
with meagre libraries, with a slender reading public 
to address, with no possibility of making literature 
a livelihood, and with greater competition from 
foreign sources than that of which complaint is 
still made. 


CHAPTER III. 


1812-1861. 

1. Theological Changes. —The increasing im¬ 
portance of politioal affairs, together with the growth 
in size and prosperity of the whole nation, served 
to deprive theology of its preeminent place in Amer¬ 
ican literature, though only the relative number of 
volumes on religious subjects was diminished. The 
beginning of the present century, however, was 
marked by a considerable controversial excitement 
among the New England clergy, incident to the 
spread of Unitarian views in and around Boston. 
Harvard University was the centre of interest, and 
the election of a Unitarian to the Hollis professor¬ 
ship of divinity in that institution, in 1805, excited 
great attention. The change in the Congregational 
churches of Massachusetts had been a gradual one, 
for, as James Russell Lowell has pointed out, many 
of the Congregational divines of Boston and Cam¬ 
bridge had been regarded with suspicion by their 
stricter brethren, even during the eighteenth cen¬ 
tury. In 1785, the very year of the appearance of 
the first American Episcopal prayer-book, King’s 
Chapel, in Boston, the pioneer Episcopal society in 


THEOLOGICAL CHANGES. 


31 


New England, had stricken out all Trinitarian ex¬ 
pressions from its liturgy; while as early as 1718 
an Arian had been ordained over the Hingham 
church. The war of pamphlets and books began 
in 1812, simultaneously with the second conflict 
between England and the United States. The 
Unitarian leaders were William Ellery Channing, 
the Henry Wares, father and son, and Andrews 
Norton; while the conservative Congregationalists 
were championed by Samuel Worcester, of Salem, 
and Moses Stuart and Leonard Woods, professors 
in the theological seminary at Andover. The Pano- 
plist was established as the Trinitarian and The 
Christian Examiner as the Unitarian organ; and 
the discussion was carried on with great ability on 
both sides, and with a suitable degree of courtesy, 
though it was impossible to debate matters in which 
the nature of God and the destiny of the soul were 
concerned without considerable earnestness of lan¬ 
guage. In later years Lyman Beecher, the Alex¬ 
anders and Professor Charles Hodge, of the Pres¬ 
byterian seminary at Princeton, William G. T. Shedd, 
of Andover Seminary, President Hopkins, of Will¬ 
iams College, Dr. Nehemiah Adams, of Boston, D r . 
John Todd, of Pittsfield, and Professor Edwards A. 
Park, of Andover, have written in defence of the 
Trinitarian side. More recent Unitarian writers 
have been Orville Dewey, William H. Furness, 
James Freeman Clarke, Henry W. Bellows, Andrew 



32 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


P. Peabody, and William Rounseville Alger. The 
Unitarians themselves have not desired to keep 
within their denominational limits such persons as 
could find greater freedom of thought outside ; and 
Theodore Parker, though remaining to the end of 
his life a devout and earnest theist, in his latter 
years ceased to work in connection with any organ¬ 
ized branch of Christianity. Parker was born at 
Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1810, was a prodigy 
of general learning and a marvel of industry, and 
excelled both as a preacher and a writer. In 1844 
he was refused admission to several Unitarian pul¬ 
pits in Boston, and during that and subsequent years 
the interest in his extremely radical views caused 
the last religious excitement which had any general 
effect on American literature. Parker died at Flor¬ 
ence in i860. 

2. William Ellery Channing, of the writers 
we have named, deserves the most prominent men¬ 
tion in a literary history. He was born at New¬ 
port in 1780, and although of slight figure and not 
very firm health, he began to be a hard student at 
an early age, graduating at Harvard when he was 
eighteen. His health was then somewhat impaired, 
and he went to Virginia as a teacher; but the return 
voyage, in 1800, was so severe that he remained 
a permanent invalid all his life. In 1803 he 
became pastor of a Boston church, and soon was 
famous as a finished orator. His style was nothing 


WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 33 

less than charming, and his Remarks on the Life and 
Character of Napoleon Bonaparte, published in 18128, 
gave him a European reputation. Many of his 
sermons were published, and he was continually 
giving addresses at ordinations and literary anni¬ 
versaries, which occasions he used to make notable 
by the presentation of carefully prepared opinions 
on the leading religious and political questions of 
the time. He had returned from Virginia an un¬ 
compromising opponent of slavery, and he argued 
against it to the day of his death. Strange to say, 
he paid no attention to literary composition, and 
hated controversy ; but his opinions were firmly 
established and his method of expression straight¬ 
forward ; so that his writings have a strong sweep. 
He had no need to remember even the old maxim, 
that art is to conceal art; for he spoke and wrote 
in the simplest and most natural way, and was sur¬ 
prised to find himself considered eloquent. His 
ideas of the sacredness of conscience were almost 
superstitious, and he thought the rights of the 
pleader ended with the solicitation toward obedi¬ 
ence to the dictates of one’s own sense of duty. 
His literary papers show what his reputation would 
have been had he confined himself to polite letters. 
His works fill six volumes, and are still found 
worthy of study, for they retain a considerable 
popularity in America and England, despite the 
temporary character of most of the subjects of the 


34 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

various lectures and essays. Channing died in 
1842, at the age of sixty-two. 

3. Other Theological Writers. — It will be 
best to finish at this place the enumeration of the 
other leading religious writers of the century. The 
principal theological work that has appeared since 
Edwards’s famous treatise is the Systematic Theology 
of Charles Hodge, professor in Princeton seminary. 
Dr. Hodge was born in Philadelphia in 1797 , grad¬ 
uated at Princeton in 1815 ; and was connected with 
the seminary from 1820 to 1878. He founded 
a review in 1825, which is still published, and 
which for half a century supported the Presby¬ 
terian tenets of faith. A few commentaries, a 
Presbyterian church history, and a religious manual 
preceded the extensive work previously mentioned, 
which appeared in 1871 and 1872. No abler expo¬ 
sition of Calvinistic principles has been made since 
Edwards, and Dr. Hodge covered more ground than 
his predecessor. The whole treatise is carefully 
elaborated, and represents the patient labor of a 
life-time. James McCosh, who became president of 
Princeton College in 1868, had won a reputation as 
a philosopher and theologian before his departure 
from Belfast, Ireland. But since he has made the 
United States his home, mention should be made 
of the principal works he has published in this 
country. They are The Laws of Discursive Thought 
(1869); Christianity a?id Positivism (1871), a reply 



OTHER THEOLOGICAL WRITERS. 35 

to the school of John Stuart Mill; and The Scottish 
Philosophy (1874), a popular history, defence, and 
exposition of the metaphysical school to which the 
author belongs. Twq^ other college presidents — 
Mark Hopkins of Williams and Noah Porter of 
Yale — have devoted much thought and ability to 
mental science. Dr. Hopkins’s influence has been 
personal, to a considerable extent, but his Evidences 
of Christianity and Law of Love have put his argu¬ 
ments before the outside world. Dr. Porter is the 
author of a larger work on The Human Lntellect, an 
elaborate and thorough manual of philosophy, of 
which the author has prepared an abridgment. 
Thomas C. Upham, professor in Bowdoin College, 
wrote in 1831 a w'ork on the Elements of Mental 
Philosophy, long the principal text-book on the sub¬ 
ject in American schools. James Marsh, president 
of the University of Vermont between 1826 and 
1833, exerted considerable influence in popularizing 
the transcendental philosophy of Coleridge in this 
country, though his writings were fragmentary. 
Laurens P. Hickok, long connected with Union 
College, Schenectady, has expounded in several 
works the doctrine of “the necessary distinctions 
in the intellectual functions of the sense, the under¬ 
standing, and the reason,” — the quotation is from 
President Seelye of Amherst,— and this doctrine 
he chiefly elaborated in his volume, The Logic of 
Reason. His literary style is obscure. Francis 


3 6 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITER A TURE. 

Wayland, president of Brown University, Provi¬ 
dence, from 1827 to 1855, wrote excellent text¬ 
books of ethics, philosophy, and political economy 
(from the free-trade standpoint). Tayler Lewis, 
professor in Union College, was linguist, philoso¬ 
pher, and scientist; and, though holding opinions 
of the stoutest orthodoxy, foreshadowed in Science 
and the Bible (1857) some of the results of later 
biological investigations. Philip Schaff, a native 
of Switzerland, who came to the United States in 
1844, has written the early volumes of a projected 
History of the Christian Church, and has been an 
industrious editor of Lange’s extended commentary 
on the Bible, as well as of the principal creeds of 
Christendom. Another leading work in church 
history is Professor W. G. T. Shedd’s History of 
Christian Doctrine (Calvinistic), against which W. R. 
Alger’s radical History of the Doctrine of the Future 
Life may be matched in ability, though hardly in 
dignity. Denominational histories have been pre¬ 
pared for the Episcopalians by Bishop William 
Stevens Perry; for the Congregationalists by George 
Punchard and Henry M. Dexter; for the Presby¬ 
terians by E. H. Gillett; and for the Methodists 
by Abel Stevens. Of these the last is the most 
noticeable. George Bush, Henry James, and The- 
ophilus Parsons have expounded Swedenborgian 
doctrines. Drs. T. J. Conant of the Baptists, Albert 
Barnes of the Presbyterians, John McClintock of 




OTHER THEOLOGICAL WRITERS. 37 

I the Methodists, and Ezra Abbot of the Unitarians 
have been experts in biblical study. Few notable 
I works from Roman Catholic sources have appeared, 
I though Archbishops Martin J. Spalding and John 
Hughes were forcible and somewhat voluminous 
I writers. A foundation for lectures on preaching at 
the Yale Theological Seminary has given our litera- 
I ture an excellent little library of works on homi- 
I letics, in which volumes have appeared by Henry 
I Ward Beecher, John Hall, William M. Taylor, and 
Phillips Brooks. Mr. Bfeecher has been, both in 
the pulpit and the press, an active supporter of the 
more liberal Congregational ideas, and his miscella¬ 
neous publications cover a wide range. The other 

I principal exponents of less stringent views in the 
historic New England theology have been Drs. 
j Nathaniel W. Taylor, of Yale, President Charles 
I G. Finney, of Oberlin, and Horace Bushnell, of 
Hartford. Dr. Bushnell wrote God in Christ , Nat¬ 
ure and the Supernatural\ The Vicarious Sacrifice , 
and other works, chiefly in defence of a “moral 
influence ” theory of the atonement, and written 
with much ripeness of thought and beauty of style. 
And so we close the long list of later theologians. 
We have seen that, to the last, philosophy has been 
mainly regarded as a defence and illustration of 
theology, and that American metaphysics have 
been, in consequence, at once less brilliant and 
less destructive than English or German. This 






38 A PRIMER OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

record now returns to the miscellaneous literature 
of the country, which had made but a modest figure 
before the second war with England. 

4. The Knickerbocker School. —“ The Knick¬ 
erbocker writers ” is a loose and not very useful 
term applied to certain authors who began to write 
soon after the beginning of the century, who were 
for the most part residents of New York, and who 
were in some cases descendants of the old Dutch 
stock. After the Knickerbocker Magazine was 
established some of them became its contributors, 
and this fact caused the nickname to cling longer 
than it otherwise would have done. For the sake 
of convenience the members of the coterie may 
be considered in order, including under this head 
the names of Washington Irving, James Kirke 
Paulding, Joseph Rodman Drake, and Fitz-Greene 
Halleck. 

5. Washington Irving was a native of New 
York city, born in 1783, and growing up in fa¬ 
miliarity with its sights and characteristics. His 
father was of an old Scotch family, and his mother 
was an Englishwoman. They were married before 
coming to this country. The boy’s older brothers 
had rather marked literary tastes, and under 
their guidance and example he soon began to read 
such of the English authors as his father’s library 
contained. At nineteen he wrote for a newspaper 
edited by his brother Peter, taking up theatrical 


WASHING TON- I AWING. 


39 


and social topics, and using the name of Jonathan 
Oldstyle. This pseudonym describes the nature 
and tone of these youthful productions with suffi¬ 
cient accuracy. In 1804, attacked by a slight 
malady of the lungs, Irving sailed for Bordeaux, 
whence, after various tours in the Mediterranean 
and Italy, he went to Paris for a few months’ 
residence. Taking Belgium and Holland on the 
way, he next settled for a time in London. He 
met Washington Allston, the painter, in Rome, and 
half made up his mind to abandon literature for 
art. He returned to New York in 1806, with a 
wide European experience and a great store of 
literary material. At home again, he at once set 
himself to work, and the next year started a fort¬ 
nightly periodical after the style of the English 
essayists of the eighteenth century. Salmagundi 
was the title, and it professed to give the “ whim- 
whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Es¬ 
quire.” Like Addison, Irving had the help of other 
literary friends in his enterprise, Paulding aiding 
him in the prose and his brother William furnish¬ 
ing the poetry. The social follies and fashions of 
the day were satirized in a vein of genial humor, 
and the work is therefore a good picture of by¬ 
gone customs. There is a story running through 
the whole, and most of the characters mentioned 
were real persons. Cockloft Hall, which figured 
prominently in the periodical, was a fine old house 


40 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

(still standing, though so modernized as to be 
unrecognizable) on the bank of the Passaic River 
in Newark. In December, 1809, Knickerbocker's 
History of New York appeared. Washington 
Irving and Peter Irving began it as a parody on 
a popular handbook issued a short time before, 
and its historical style was a burlesque of the lan¬ 
guage of a sketch printed in that publication. 
When Peter Irving went to Europe, Washington 
determined to continue the historical burlesque, 
and to make it a longer and independent comic 
history. An air of verisimilitude was given it by 
the publication of some preliminary notices con¬ 
cerning the finding of the manuscript in the Co¬ 
lumbian Hotel, in Mulberry Street; and not a few 
persons were dull enough to be deceived by its 
evident but very delicate pleasantry. Some de¬ 
scendants of the Dutchmen took serious offence at 
the personal caricatures in the book, but everybody 
read it, and it was not long before it became a 
national classic. We had, at length, something all 
our own, which was not copied from London or 
borrowed from Paris; and the impetus thus given 
to native production was very great. In 1810 
Irving wrote a short biographical sketch of the 
poet Campbell, and three years later edited a 
magazine in Philadelphia, which for the next few 
years showed some signs of becoming the literary 
capital of the country. During another trip to 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 


41 


Europe he began to publish the Sketch Book , in 
numbers, and it was a success both in London and 
New York. Irving had won the warm friendship 
of Sir Walter Scott, who induced the London pub¬ 
lisher, Murray, to accept his book and pay the 
round price of £200 for it. Murray afterwards 
doubled this sum, and Irving soon found himself 
in receipt of revenues from his pen much greater 
than Charles Brockden Brown, his only American 
predecessor as a professional author, ever enjoyed. 
The Sketch Book contained the Legend of Sleepy 
Hollow and Rip Van Winkle; and readers per¬ 
ceived that a new master of prose style had arisen, 
as well as a delicate humorist and a man in sym¬ 
pathy with the human heart. In 1820 and 1821 
Irving was in Paris, and in the latter year Mur¬ 
ray paid him the enormous price of ^1,000 for 
Bracebridge Hall , a picture of English country life. 
In 1824 ^1,500 was paid by the same publisher 
for the Tales of a Traveller, a work of similar char¬ 
acter, and containing stories of greater interest. 
Strange to say, it met with sharp criticism both in 
England and the United States. Two years later 
Alexander H. Everett, then minister to Spain, gave 
Irving a commission to translate some recently col¬ 
lected documents concerning Columbus. This was 
the basis of Irving’s Life and Voyages of Christopher 
Columbus , published in London in 1828, which was 
sold for three thousand guineas. Irving was now 


42 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

as successful both in fame and money as the best 
English authors who wrote at that period of high 
literary remuneration. This biographical work was 
kindly received by the critics, and seems to have 
determined Irving to cultivate the Spanish field 
further. The Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada 
followed, the author having made another tour in 
the south of Spain. It was a losing venture, and 
attracted no general praise; but Irving wrote still 
another Spanish book on the Voyages of the Compaii- 
ions of Columbus, which appeared in 1831. The 
Alhambra (1832) was a sort of Spanish edition of 
Bracebridge Hall. After serving for a time as sec¬ 
retary of legation in London, Irving returned home 
in 1832, received a public dinner, and determined 
to explore the wilds of the West, in lieu of Castilian 
antiquity. His Tour on the Prairies (1835) was 
issued, with some European sketches, in a volume 
entitled The Crayon Miscellany, which took its 
name from the author’s pseudonym of Geoffrey 
Crayon, Gentleman. Astoria, the obscurest of his 
books, described Irving’s youthful visits to the 
Montreal station of the Northwest Fur Company, 
and embodied accounts of early fur-trading expe¬ 
ditions in Oregon, by John Jacob Astor and others. 
Miscellaneous contributions to the Knickerbocker 
Magazine occupied the author until his appoint¬ 
ment, in 1842, as minister to Spain. Coming 
back in 1846, he enlarged a very agreeable biog- 


JAMES KIRKE PAULDING. 


43 


raphy of Oliver Goldsmith, in which he hit Dr. 
Johnson some hard raps, and also went to work on 
Mahomet and his Successors , published in 1850. 
About the same time he subjected the whole of 
his previous works to slight revisions, and a new 
and uniform edition was brought out. Undeterred 
by advancing age (he was now 67), Irving set to 
work upon his largest labor, the Life of Washington, 
the fifth and last volume of which was published 
three months before his death, in 1859. This work 
had an army of readers, and deserved them, for it 
embodied all the accessible facts concerning Wash¬ 
ington’s life, in the felicitous style of one of the 
greatest masters of English. The earlier works, 
however, are most prized by the author’s public, 
and the Sketch Book , on the whole, remains the best 
example of his powers, combining, as it does, 
humor, pathos, and a wonderful felicity of descrip¬ 
tion. Irving never married, but kept bachelor’s hall 
in an attractive fashion at his cottage of “ Sunny- 
side ” in Tarrytown. 

6. James Kirke Paulding was five years older 
than Irving, having been born in 1778 in the town 
of Nine Partners, in Dutchess County, New York. 
He also survived Irving for a similarly brief period, 
dying in Hyde Park, New York, in i860. William 
Irving was his brother-in-law, and Paulding took up 
his abode in the house of that gentleman, in New 
York, in 1797. Of course, having literary tastes of 


44 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

his own, he fell in heartily with the plans of his 
every-day associates, and worked upon Salmagundi 
with enthusiasm, when that short-lived periodical 
was started. Paulding was an office-holder a good 
part of his life, being secretary to the board of navy 
commissioners in 1815, navy agent at New York for 
a dozen years, and secretary of the navy during the 
administration of Van Buren. He began his career 
as a poet; brought out, single-handed, in 1819, a 
second series of Salmagundi; and during all his life 
was constantly writing poems, novels, humorous 
sketches, and pamphlets. The Dutchman's Fireside, 
a novel published in 1831, is his best work; though, 
like Irving, he wrote a considerable life of Washing¬ 
ton. Paulding’s mark on American literature was 
not a permanent one, though sufficient interest 
remained in his writings to warrant the publication 
of a revised edition of the best of them in 1867 
and 1868. 

7. Joseph Rodman Drake was a sort of Amer¬ 
ican Keats in that he wrote little, died young, and 
has kept a permanent place in the standard library. 
At the time of his death (1820) he was only twenty- 
five, having been a resident of New York all his 
life. Poverty was his lot at the first, but he con¬ 
trived to study medicine, taking his degree in 1816. 
Marrying a rich wife was his deliverance, and he 
was thus enabled to spend much of his time with 
Fenimore Cooper and Fitz-Greene Halleck, mean- 


FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 


45 


while maturing plans for literary labor. The Cul¬ 
prit Fay , his chief work, appeared in 1819, having 
been written in consequence of a discussion between 
Drake, Cooper, and Halleck concerning the poetry 
of American rivers. In 1819, having been to Eu¬ 
rope, he united with Halleck to contribute satirical 
verses to the newspapers, under the name of 
“Croaker,” or “Croaker, Jr.” The American Flag , 
a national lyric of much spirit, keeps Drake’s name 
in the school readers. He died of consumption in 
1820, thus completing the parallel to Keats. It is 
useless to speculate on the possibilities of his career 
had he lived; but surely none of our poets, unless 
it be Bryant, wrote so well while yet under age. 

8. Fitz-Greene Halleck was almost exactly a 
contemporary of Irving and Paulding, having been 
born at Guilford, Connecticut, in 1790, and dying 
there in 1867. He removed to New York in 1811, 
and became clerk in a banking-house, but after¬ 
wards went into the office of John Jacob Astor. 
Halleck, Charles Sprague, Hiram Rich, and Ed¬ 
mund C. Stedman, of our poets, have resembled 
the English Samuel Rogers in being connected 
with banking. Halleck wrote little poems when a 
boy, some of which he contrived to get printed in 
the newspapers. But when he formed his literary 
partnership with Drake, though twenty-eight years 
old, he had no great reputation. He wrote little 
more than Drake, and his martial poem, Marca 


4 6 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Bozzaris (first published in a volume in 1827) has 
remained his virtual title to fame, though he wrote 
a long poem called Fanny , and lesser pieces en¬ 
titled Alnwick Castle and Burns , which have their 
admirers. On Drake’s death he produced an ex¬ 
cellent poem, four lines of which promptly passed 
into the paradise of current quotation. With the 
mention of his poem on Twilight , it is only neces¬ 
sary to add that Halleck retired to Guilford in 1849 
on a pension of two hundred dollars a year, given 
by the will of John Jacob Astor. Halleck edited an 
excellent edition of Byron, as well as two volumes 
of selections from the British poets. 

9. Other Early Poets. — Richard Henry Dana 
was born in 1787, and in early life, having studied 
at Harvard, was associated with the club of gentle¬ 
men, headed by William Tudor, which established 
The North American Review in 1815. Strangely, 
the venerable Mr. Dana did not receive his degree 
of Bachelor of Arts until 1866, at the age of seventy- 
eight, having participated in the famous Harvard 
rebellion of 1807. Like his New York contem¬ 
poraries, he - published an essay-serial called The 
Idle Man , on which Bryant and Washington Alls- 
ton gave him some help. The Buccaneer , with 
other excellent and carefully written poems, ap¬ 
peared in 1827, and this piece remains his best 
achievement. His prose essays are graceful and 
his poetical style worthy of comparison with that of 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 


47 


{he British poets of the elder day. Charles Sprague, 
a Bostonian who never went ten miles from his 
home, was another writer who deserves mention for 
the quality rather than the quantity of his verse. 
His Ode o?i Shakespeare is a remarkable and admi¬ 
rable production. Richard Henry Wilde, a native 
of Dublin and a member of Congress from Georgia, 
wrote a good Life of Tasso , a long poem entitled 
Hesperia , and a famous lyric beginning, My Life is 
like a Summer Rose. Other poets made celebrated 
by single pieces were Francis Scott Key, whose 
Star Spangled Banner was written during the siege 
of Fort MeHenry, Baltimore, in the war of 1812; 
Samuel Woodworth, who wrote The Old Oaken 
Bucket; John Howard Payne, whose Home, Sweet 
Home was first made public in a play; Albert G. 
Greene, the author of Old Grimes is Dead; and 
William Augustus Muhlenberg, whose L would not 
live alway is one of the most famous of hymns. 
Washington Allston, the artist, wrote some medi¬ 
ocre poetry and a tolerably good novel. J. G. C. 
Brainard and James A. Hillhouse were the suc¬ 
cessors of Trumbull in Connecticut. Hillhouse 
was the author of somewhat heavy poems and 
dramas on religious subjects, Hadad coming under 
the latter head, and being his best-known produc¬ 
tion. 

10. William Cullen Bryant connected the 
earlier and later days of our literature; for, unlike 


48 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN- LITER A TURE. 

Mr. Dana, he continued his activity as an author 
to the end of his life, in 1878. He was born in 
Cumnnngton, Massachusetts, in 1794, his father 
being the village physician and a man of good 
mental powers. Of all examples of literary pre¬ 
cocity Bryant is the most remarkable. At the age 
of ten he was writing verse for the country papers, 
and at fourteen he brought out a couple of political 
poems, The Embargo and The Spanish Revolution. 
They were received with such favor that it was 
difficult to persuade the public that they were the 
work of a boy of fourteen. A second edition ap¬ 
peared in 1809, with certifications to that effect. 

In 1810 Bryant entered Williams College, but did 
not graduate, receiving, like Dana, his bachelor’s 
degree many years afterward. While in college 
he was famous as a writer and reader. Taking the 
law for his profession, he printed in 1817 his 
celebrated poem of Thanatopsis, choosing as the 
vehicle The North American Review , which he 
began as a bi-monthly and a general literary mag¬ 
azine. The poem has since been greatly changed, 
but even in its earliest form it plianly showed the 
arrival of an American poet greater than any who j 
had preceded him. Though the poem has death 
for its subject, it contains, like the Psalms of 
David, no absolute expression concerning the con¬ 
scious immortality of the soul; yet it has been 
universally accepted by Christians as an embodi- 







WILLIAM CULLEN LEVANT. 


49 


ment of right views of life and death; omitting, 
perhaps, but not denying. In 1821 Bryant read 
a long poem on The Ages , before the Phi Beta 
Kappa Society at Harvard, and the same year 
collected a few of his poems in a volume published 
at Cambridge. In 1825 he removed to New York, 
and became editor of the United States Review, for 
which he wrote largely. The next year he became 
editorially connected with the Evening Rost, then a 
strong Federalist paper, but changed by Bryant 
into an organ of Democracy and free trade. A 
little bound volume, called The Talisman, appeared 
annually for three years, beginning in 1827, Robert 
C. Sands and Gulian C. Verplanck doing some of 
the writing, and Bryant the rest. It only differed 
from The Idle Man and Salmagundi in its wider 
scope, less frequent issue, and possession of covers. 
At this time Bryant wrote occasional short stories. 
In 1832 he brought out a new edition of his poems, 
which, thanks to the influence of Irving, was re¬ 
issued in London. Kit North praised it in Black¬ 
wood, and the poet’s position became secure, both 
abroad and at home. Between 1834 and 1849 
Bryant was thrice in Europe, and wrote of his 
journeyings in a prose work called Letters of a 
Traveller. A second series of these letters followed 
another journey in 1858. By 1864 Mr. Bryant, 
though a very slow and painstaking writer, had 
accumulated enough additional poems to make a 





50 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

thin volume. Of all his pieces, besides Thana -■ 
top sis, those entitled To a Waterfowl , A Forest 
Hymn , and The Planting of the Apple-Tree are the 
best. Bryant is the poet of nature, whose various 
moods are accurately depicted in his polished verse. 

A certain coldness can fairly be charged against 
him, but no underlying lack of human sympathy. 
After passing his seventieth birthday, he deter¬ 
mined to translate the Iliad of Homer. Although, 
unlike certain other celebrated translators, he was 
not compelled to learn the language, he prepared 
himself thoroughly for the task, and published in 
1869 a version which, notwithstanding the constant 
agitation in England, for twenty years, of the ques¬ 
tion of Homeric translation, has been very gener- 1 
ally accepted as a good English Homer. It is in ! 
unrhymed heroic pentameter. A similar translation 
of the Odyssey appeared in 1871. By a fortunate 
circumstance, the short period since 1867 has seen 
the appearance in America of new versions of the , 
Iliad , Odyssey , Divine Comedy , AE?ieid, and Faust , \ 
each of which has at once taken a creditable place i 
among translations in English. Of the last three 
mention will be made under the names of their 
respective translators. 

11. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the 
third in age of the greater American poets,— Bryant 
and Emerson having been his seniors, and Whittier 
ten months his junior, though both were born in 






HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 5 I 

1807. Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, of 
a courtly and well-to-do family. When fourteen 
years old, he entered Bowdoin College, where he 
graduated in 1825 in the class with Nathaniel 
Hawthorne. It is a circumstance without precedent 
that the two persons who are by many considered 
the first poet and the first prose writer of the coun¬ 
try received their bachelor’s degree at the same 
time and from the same hands. Other members of 
this remarkable class were George B. Cheever, John 
S. C. Abbott, and S. S. Prentiss. William Pitt 
Fessenden, John P. Hale, and Franklin Pierce were 
also in college at the time. Like Bryant, Longfellow 
at first determined to be a lawyer, but the year after 
graduation, though but nineteen, he was offered the 
professorship of modern languages at Bowdoin, to 
qualify himself for which position he spent three 
years of study in Europe. From 1829, after his 
return, until 1835 he occupied the chair, writing 
short poems, and printing prose articles in The North 
American Review. His first book was a little essay 
on the moral and devotional poetry of Spain, includ¬ 
ing translations of the Coplas de Manrique and some 
of Lope de Vega’s sonnets. In 1835 he was chosen 
to succeed George Ticknor, who had just resigned 
the chair of modern languages at Harvard, a posi¬ 
tion in filling which the university authorities have 
always shown remarkable wisdom. This professor¬ 
ship he continued to hold until 1854, when he re- 


52 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

signed and was succeeded by James Russell Lowell. 
With occasional trips to Europe, he continued to 
reside in Cambridge until his death in 1882, occupy¬ 
ing the stately old house used by Washington for 
his head-quarters in 1775. 

12. Longfellow’s Poems. — Voices of the Night, 
his first original volume, appeared in 1839, an d ^ n " 
eluded the best of the author’s poems written up to 
that date ; among them, some produced in his un¬ 
dergraduate days at Bowdoin. He was luckier than 
Tennyson in the reception given to his first venture, 
for A Psalm of Life, The Peaper and the Flowers, and 
Woods in Winter were among the pieces included, 
almost every one of which at once became a popular 
favorite. Ballads and Other Poems — among them 
The Skeleton in Armor, The Rainy Day, and The Vil¬ 
lage Blacksmith — appeared in 1842; and also a 
slender collection of Poems on Slavery, generally 
considered the least meritorious of the poet’s works. 
The Spanish Student (1843), a capital drama, intro¬ 
duced an element of humor which Mr. Longfellow, 
with a single exception, did not afterwards cultivate. 
The Belfry of Bruges, mainly original poems, with a 
few translations, came in 1846. The next year, 
1847, Mr. Longfellow began the publication of sev¬ 
eral poems which had a powerful effect in stimulat¬ 
ing the growth of a literature devoted to American 
subjects. Evangeline was the first, written in hex¬ 
ameters, a metre previously little used. In its 


LONGFELLOW'S FOE MS. 


53 


employment Mr. Longfellow has had plenty of fol¬ 
lowers, but none have succeeded in its use save 
Arthur H. Clough, an English poet who resided in 
America for a time, and William D. Howells. The 
latter writer, unlike Longfellow, introduces rhymes 
into the metre. The Seaside and the Fireside (minor 
poems) and The Golden Legend came between 
Evangeline and Hiawatha (1855), another American 
poem, this time on an Indian subject, and written 
in a second unfamiliar metre, trochaic octosyllables. 
In it were embodied many Indian legends industri¬ 
ously collected by the author, and put into a form 
that proved attractive to multitudes of Americans, 
and wholly novel to the English public, which had 
already given to Longfellow greater favor than it 
had ever shown to Tennyson. The Courtship of 
Miles Standish (1858) was a semi-humorous poem of 
colonial days, also in hexameters. In Tales of a 
Wayside Inn (1863), the expedient was adopted of 
embodying, as tales told at a chance gathering in 
an old inn at Sudbury, several long poems on vari¬ 
ous subjects. Two additional series have since 
appeared. Mr. Longfellow’s distinctively American 
poems closed with The New England Tragedies 
(1868), two stern colonial dramas; and in 1871, 
having published The Divine Tragedy , a dramatic 
account of the crucifixion of Christ, the author 
united the two last-mentioned works and The Golden 
Lege?id in a single volume entitled Christus. They 





54 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

make a symmetrical whole, but the idea of connect- | 
ing them was probably conceived after the issue of 
the earliest part. The Hanging of the Crane , a brief 
domestic poem, made a sumptuous illustrated vol¬ 
ume in 1874; and the next year the poet read at 
the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation at Bowdoin 
a remarkable poem, Morituri Salutamus, which, un¬ 
like most occasional pieces, was great and noble, 
because of the author’s intense personal feeling in 
the event. Flower de Luce, Aftermath , The Masque 
of Pandora , Keramos , and Ultima Thule were later 
books ; In the Harbor and Michael Angelo posthu¬ 
mous. Throughout all Longfellow’s poetry the pre¬ 
vailing marks are grace and beauty, warmed by a 
greater human sympathy than is displayed in the 
writings of the majority of eminent poets. 

13. Longfellow’s Prose Works. — Though they 
are only three in all, the prose volumes of Mr. Long¬ 
fellow deserve to rank with the best of American 
books. Daintiness is their prevailing characteristic. 
Outre-Mer (1835) is a collection of sketches of 
travel, with special attention to the romantic feat- ! 
ures of continental life. Hyperion (1839) is a rounded 
and interesting romance, with a quaintness which is 
not artificial. It is a wonderful example of the : 
beauty of the English language. Kavanagh (1849) 
is a shorter tale, written in a more popular, but 
idyllic, style. It should be mentioned that an essay 
on Anglo-Saxon literature, published more than 




JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 


55 


forty years ago, gave the first considerable impulse 
to the study of that language, in which American 
scholars have since done more work than their 
English contemporaries. 

14. Longfellow’s Dante. — All through his 
poetry Mr. Longfellow shows the influence of his 
familiar acquaintance with foreign literature, and 
almost all of his collected volumes have contained 
a few translations. In the autumn of 1867, a 
volume a month, appeared his translation of the 
Divine Comedy of Dante, of which he had long been 
a profound student. It closely follows the metre 
of the original, line by line; and may be said 
to have shortened the reign of the old-fashioned 
loose school of translators, like Chapman, Dryden, 
and Pope. The spirit as well as the form of the 
original is preserved; and Mr. Longfellow, besides 
giving a version of Dante which is incomparably 
superior to its predecessors, has influenced, by his 
work, quite a body of American literalists. This 
fidelity and sympathy is gained, however, at the 
expense of tripping ease of language, and the trans¬ 
lation must be considered rather hard reading, a 
circumstance partly due to the frequent presence 
of the feminine ending of the verse. 

15. John Greenleaf Whittier, although always 
the most industrious and conscientious of authors, 
never attained high popularity until recent years, 
when, by common consent, he has been ranked with 


56 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

the first of American poets. A poor boy, of Quaker 
parentage, he began life as 9. farm hand and shoe¬ 
maker, going to the village school in the winter 
months. His first poetical efforts, written when he 
was but seventeen, were published in the Newbury- 
port Free Press , edited by William Lloyd Garrison, 
and he subsequently contributed verses to the 
Haverhill (Massachusetts) Gazette, published near 
his birthplace. He afterwards contrived to spend 
two years at the academy in that town. In 1829 he 
began to be connected with journalism in Boston, 
where, as well as in Hartford, Haverhill, Phila¬ 
delphia, and Washington, he edited newspapers 
until 1839, and in 1847 he became corresponding 
editor of Dr. Gamaliel Bailey’s National Era , of 
Washington, to which he contributed many poems, 
reformatory and otherwise. He early identified 
himself with the movement for the abolition of 
slavery, aiding in the establishment of the American 
Antislavery Society at Philadelphia; and of this act 
he has said that, though not insensible to literary 
reputation, he set a higher value on his “ name as 
appended to the Antislavery Declaration of 1833 
than on the title-page of any book.” Legends of New 
England ( 1831) was the title of his first collection 
of poems, but after that and throughout the long 
antislavery agitation, his poems were chiefly reform¬ 
atory, and directed to awakening the people to the 
horrors of slavery and the wickedness of any com- 






























« 



































































































































■ 































JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 57 

promise or complicity with those who were engaged 
in the dreadful traffic. His Voices of Freedom (1841) 
and The Panorama and other Poems (1856) contain 
many poems which are full of fire and inspiration, 
and glow with moral indignation and scorn. They 
were spirit-stirring as a trumpet-blast, and a power¬ 
ful help towards the downfall of slavery. His 
poems, In War-Time (1863), gave him a popularity 
which his adherence to the hitherto despised cause 
had rendered impossible, and with the close of the 
war he gladly turned his pen to gentler themes, 
publishing successively Snow-Bound (1865), The 
Te?it on the Beach (1867), Among the Hills (1868), 
Miriam (1870), The Pennsylvania Pilgrim (1872), 
Hazel-Blossoms (1874), The Vision of Echard (1878), 
and The King's Missive , and Other Poems (1881). 
Maud Muller is the best known of his poems, and 
Barbara Frietchie (1862) the most remarkable of 
those connected with the civil war. Snow-Bound is 
a genuine New England idyl, and puts between its 
covers more of the spirit of the region than any 
other American book. It will forever remain a 
'national classic. Mr. Whittier has collected the 
chief of his prose writings in two volumes, and has 
edited the best edition of John Woolman’s Journal. 
As a writer of prose, he unites strength and grace 
in an unusual degree. His biographical sketches 
are valuable as contributions to political history, 
and, in some cases, beautiful as the tribute of friend 
to friend. 


58 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


16. Holmes’s Poems. — Oliver Wendell Holmes 
was born in a historic house in Cambridge, just 
opposite the Harvard University buildings, in 1809, 
and grew up in that town before it had outgrown 
its quainter local characteristics. At twenty he 
graduated at Harvard, in a class whose virtues and i 
whose ornaments he has never ceased to celebrate 
in anniversary poems. Like Bryant, Longfellow, 
and Lowell, he started out as a lawyer, but soon 
took up medicine, which he studied in Europe, 
paying special attention to anatomy, which branch 
he long taught at Harvard. The Collegian, a col¬ 
lege periodical, received many contributions from 
him, and in 1836, the year he took his medical 
degree, he brought out a collected edition of his 
poems in Boston, including a rhymed essay on 
Poetry , read by him at Cambridge that year. From 
that time he has always been the favorite Amer¬ 
ican poet at literary anniversaries. His lyrical 
facility is greater than that of any other of our 
writers, and for neatness it is not too much to 
say that he is the equal of Pope. That he is a 
humorist has detracted from rather than added to 
his reputation, for there is a popular idea that a 
humorist cannot have deep feeling. In Holmes’s 
case this is not true, for The Last Leaf, perhaps his 
best single poem, is a masterpiece of pathos. Old 
Ironsides is a standard national lyric, and Holmes 
wrote a good share of the few commendable poems 


















HOLMES'S PROSE WORKS. 


59 


evoked by the civil war. Some of his best pieces — 
The Deacon's Masterpiece, Parson Turell's Legacy, 
and Homesick in Heaven — have first appeared in 
his longer prose works, where they have fitted into 
their surroundings with exquisite appropriateness. 
He has written no long poem. 

17. Holmes’s Prose Works. — Dr. Holmes was a 
leading spirit in the establishment of The Atlantic 
Monthly, which became, with its first number, the 
Blackwood of Boston, and has probably printed 
more articles by eminent authors within the past 
twenty years than any magazine in the language. 
Its prompt success was principally due to Dr. 
Holmes’s Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, a series 
of articles, half story, half essay, which were a 
novelty in American literature. Their satire is 
severe and yet genial, and their wit is as polished 
and supple as a Damascus blade. The Professor at 
the Breakfast Table, written in the same style, soon 
followed; and in 1872 the author once more tried 
the dangerous experiment of endeavoring to repeat 
a former triumph, in which attempt he was entirely 
successful. Elsie Vefiner, a curious novel whose 
burden was inherited tendencies, appeared in i860, 
and The Guardian Angel, one of the best American 
novels thus far produced, in 1867. The hero of 
the latter work is a scholarly old bachelor who has 
written an unsuccessful book, but who goes through 
the world like a moving patch of sunshine. Dr. 


60 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

Holmes prepared a biography of John Lothrop 
Motley in 1878, and in 1882 and 1883 issued revised 
editions of his prose works. 

18. James Russell Lowell, like Holmes, has 
written both poetry and prose, but it will not be 
necessary to consider them in separate sections. 
He, too, was born in Cambridge, in 1819, in a spa¬ 
cious old house which is still his home. His father 
was the minister of the West Congregational Church 
in Boston. Lowell graduated at Harvard in 1838, 
when he was class poet, and recited a poem which 
was memorable in the student literature of the time. 
A law office in Boston was opened in 1840, but the 
poet soon shut its doors and devoted himself en¬ 
tirely to literature. A Year's Life (1841) included 
his poems up to that date, some of which the 
author has since revised, throwing away the rest. 
Two years later he began the publication, in Boston, 
of The Pioneer, a periodical of so high a character 
that it would surely fail now, and of course promptly 
came to its death at that time, though Lowell, Haw¬ 
thorne, and Poe wrote for it. Robert Carter assisted 
Lowell in editing the three numbers that appeared. 
In 1844 Lowell gathered poems enough to make 
another volume; among them were A Legend of 
Brittany and Bhcecus. Some of the sonnets were 
pronounced in their antislavery sentiments, being 
addressed to Wendell Phillips and' Joshua R. 
Giddings. The remainder of the volume consisted 






















































































































JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 61 

of pieces which indicated that a new and true poet 
had arisen. The subjects were not novel, but they 
were treated in a style which was a rare union of 
strength and minuteness of phrase, the author’s 
opulence of thought preventing his nicety from 
seeming artificial. A prose series of Conversations 
on the Old Poets (1845) critically considered Chaucer, 
George Chapman, and some obscure writers. It 
found few readers, and has never been reissued, 
though its author’s maturer judgment has since pre¬ 
pared critical articles on several of the authors in¬ 
cluded, notably Chaucer. Another volume of poems 
was printed in 1848, of which The Present Crisis 
made a considerable sensation. The Vision of Sir 
Launfal, published the same year, is the most 
elaborate of the author’s productions, being an 
allegory of good deeds, and containing many quot¬ 
able lines. At this time Mr. Lowell was very indus¬ 
trious, for in 1848 he also brought out, in New 
York, A Fable for Critics, a wonderfully clever char¬ 
acterization, in fluent verse, of the leading authors 
of the day, himself included. This characteriza¬ 
tion, though made in a humorous style, was accurate 
and just, and in the case of the younger writers 
mentioned its predictions have been amply verified. 
At the same time appeared the first series of the 
Biglow Papers, a collection of poems in Yankee 
dialect, by “ Hosea Biglow,” edited and furnished 
with absurdly learned notes and introductions by 



I 


62 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITER A TURE. 

“ Homer Wilbur, A.M., pastor of the First Church 
in Jaalam. ,, These poems served a double purpose; 1 
that of preserving the perishable local expressions ( 
of New England in a permanent form, and of fight- ' 
ing with the sharpest weapons of satire against the 
extension of slavery. This work, together with the j 
Fable for Critics, for the first time made Mr. Lowell ' 
a popular author, and gave him a reputation in 
England, though English readers have more re-j! 
cently discovered that he is something more than^ 
a humorist. In 1855 Mr. Lowell succeeded Mr. j 
Longfellow in the chair of polite letters at Harvard, 
taking a European trip before entering upon his 
new duties. In 1867 a second series of the Biglow 
Papers included those poems in dialect which had 
• been called out by the war. They were preceded 
by a critical essay in which was shown the antiquity 
of many presumed Yankee peculiarities of expres¬ 
sion. Never a fertile writer, it was not until 1869 
that sufficient minor poems were collected by Mr. 
Lowell to make another volume, which took its title 
of Under the Willows from its leading poem. The 
Commemoration Ode, in honor of the Harvard men 
who were killed in the war, was recited at Cam 
bridge in 1865, and is the author’s noblest poem 
and the chief literary result of the war. For con¬ 
siderable periods Mr. Lowell was editor of The 
Atlantic Monthly and The North A?nerican Review; 
and his critical and miscellaneous essays in those 


OTHER POETS. 


63 


periodicals have been collected into volumes entitled 
Among my Books (two series) and My Study Win¬ 
dows. These books, which show their author to be 
the leading American critic, are a very agreeable 
union of wit and wisdom, and are the result of 
extensive reading, illuminated by excellent critical 
insight. The only objection ever made to them is 
due to their somewhat colloquial style; but this has 
been generally regarded as one of their charms. 
As literary guides and stimulants for young readers 
they are unsurpassed. 

19. Edgar Allan Poe was # an entirely original 
figure in American literature. His temperament 
was melancholy; he hated restraint of every kind; 
and he was the slave of drink. These three cir¬ 
cumstances made his life a wretched record of 
poverty and suffering. But his Bells , Haven, and 
Annabel Lee are wonderfully melodious ; and he 
was a master in that assonance and alliteration 
which have since been so marked a characteristic 
of the schools of Swinburne in England and 
Baudelaire in France. In prose Poe wrote able 
but partisan literary criticisms, and weird tales 
which are much inferior to those of Hawthorne. 
He was bom in 1809, and died in 1849. 

20. Other Poets. — American literature has been 
uncommonly fertile in poets who, though they have 
not reached the first rank, have written well and 
proved their right to the name. James Gates Per- 



64 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

cival, a melancholy and shy scholar, wrote A 
Dream of a Day , and other pieces which have 
retained popularity for their sentiment and smooth 
versification. N. P. Willis and George P. Morris, 
long associated on a New York family journal, were 
poets whose reputation has not been a lasting one. 
Willis wrote scriptural pieces of much power, and 
his present neglect by the public is as unjust as its 
previous flattery was unwise. The artificiality of 
his poems has been their ruin. Morris wrote spir¬ 
ited and popular songs, which are still sung. 
Edward Coate Pinkney, of Baltimore, was the 
author of lyrics which Poe insisted would have 
made him famous had he lived in New England. 
Charles Fenno Hoffman, still living, but long in¬ 
curably insane, was also a facile lyrist, and wrote 
a novel and books of travel. George H. Calvert 
has produced many dramas and poems, but his 
biographies of Goethe and Rubens are better worth 
preservation. Dr. Thomas Dunn English became 
famous by a single song, Be?i Bolt; he has since 
devoted himself more particularly to national poems. 
George H. Boker, of Philadelphia, has zealously 
tried to better the condition of the meagre field 
of American dramatic literature; and some of his 
plays have strength and fire. Charles T. Brooks 
has made a good translation of the first part of 
Faust , and has rendered many of the most famous 
German lyrics into English. C. P. Cranch’s trans- 




OTHER POETS. 


65 


lation of the ALneid of Virgil, in unrhymed penta¬ 
meter, ranks with the other books in the recent 
notable series of American translations. Mr. 
Cranch has also put into original poetry a painter’s 
color and art. The Divine Comedy of Dante has 
been partially translated by Dr. T. W. Parsons, of 
Boston, at the expense of his original verse, which 
is of excellent quality. Alfred B. Street’s numerous 
poems are mainly devoted to the celebration of 
nature. W. W. Story, once a neighbor and friend 
of Lowell’s but latterly a resident of Rome, has 
joined poetry and sculpture, just as Allston and 
! Cranch have united poetry and painting, and with 
equal success. Notwithstanding the multiplicity of 
religious denominations in this country, few good 
hymns have been written during the present cen- 
| tury. As far as literature goes, our humor has been 
better than our piety. The greatest development of 
American humor, in prose and verse, has been of 
late years, but before the war John G. Saxe had 
become famous for his clever travesties, puns, and 
. love poems. As a poet of pure merriment he is 
j unsurpassed. The first ( 5 f a numerous body of 
social satires was William Allen Butler’s Nothing 
to Wear , published in 1857. Not until recently 
have we had any female poets of the first rank; 
those writing before the war, save the Cary sisters, 
having been almost without exception slaves, led by 
Mrs. Sigourney, of the sentimentality which Mrs. 




66 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN- LITER A TURE. 

Hemans and L. E. L. had made fashionable in j 
England. 

21. Orators. — During the present century, cer- ! 
tainly in its first half, oratory has equalled its 
splendid beginning a hundred years ago. Unques¬ 
tionably, the speeches of Daniel Webster, John 
C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, Edward Everett, Rufus 
Choate, William H. Seward, Charles Sumner, j 
Robert C. Winthrop, William Lloyd Garrison, and ' 
Wendell Phillips belong to literature. Fortunately, I 
the principal orations and addresses of all of them 
have been well edited and issued in suitable form 
for preservation and study, being in many cases j 
revised by the authors themselves. 

22. Historians. — At first sight the number of 
notable American historians seems small; but a 
comparison with other nations shows that during 
the present century we have had more than our 
share of historical writers of the first rank. Where 
libraries have not been accessible, our industrious 
investigators have created them; and their zeal 
and accuracy have made foreign countries their 
debtors, conspicuously in the case of Prescott, 
Motley, and Parkman. 

23. Richard Hildreth was born in Deerfield, 
Massachusetts, in 1807, and died in Florence, Italy, 
in 1865. He graduated at Harvard in 1826, stud¬ 
ied law, and then entered journalism. Like Motley, 
Hildreth began his literary career by writing a 



GEORGE BANCROFT. 


6; 

feeble novel, called Archy Moore (1837), directed 
against slavery, whose evils the author, like Chan- 
ning, had beheld while on a tour for his health. 
Afterwards he wrote, in books and in the news¬ 
papers, in favor of free banking and against Texan 
annexation. Another forgotten work of his was a 
campaign life of Harrison; and Hildreth also took 
a lively share in the theological controversies at 
that time still smouldering in Boston. A Theory of 
Morals and A Theory of Politics were written while 
the author was editing a paper in British Guiana. 
A longer list of obscure works written by a famous 
author need not be asked for; but Hildreth stepped 
to the front rank in his History of the United States , 
which he had been planning to write all his life, 
and for which plenty of material had been accumu¬ 
lated. It begins with the discovery of America, 
and ends with the first presidential term of James 
Monroe. Its style is rather dry. 

24. George Bancroft, the author of the other 
chief history of the United States, was also born 
in Massachusetts and graduated at Harvard. His 
studies were completed at Gottingen, then the fash¬ 
ionable German university for American students, 
and on his return he published a volume of poems 
and a translation of a work on ancient Greece. An 
attempt to found an American Eton at Northamp¬ 
ton, Massachusetts, in which Brancroft took part, 
was soon abandoned. The first volume of his 





68 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITER A TURE. 

History of the United States , the standard "work 
on the subject, both for it? matter and manner, 
appeared in 1834. Since that time he has toiled 
diligently and pretty constantly upon it, though 
the twelfth volume did not appear until 1882, the 
author having meanwhile been secretary of the navy 
and minister to England and Prussia. The style of 
the work is brilliant, and the author excels in 
descriptive passages. His frank comments on the 
characters mentioned have brought down upon him 
a shower of pamphlets written by descendants or 
partisans of the officers criticised. The work 
begins with Columbus and ends in 1789. A re¬ 
vised edition is now (1883) in course of publication. 

25. John Gorham Palfrey, another Massachu¬ 
setts man and Harvard graduate, who for the first 
fifty years of his life was a student of biblical liter¬ 
ature and a politician, in both of which characters 
he was successful, began in 1858 a History of New 
England, which, with no great charm of language, 
holds a high rank for completeness and accuracy. 
No other part of the country has found so full a 
historian. Four volumes had been issued previous 
to the author’s death in 1881. 

26. William Hickling . Prescott, the most 
brilliant and famous of American historians, was a 
descendant of William Prescott, who fought at 
Bunker Hill. While at Harvard, in 1812, his left 
eye was so injured that during the rest of his life 


JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 69 

Prescott was partly blind, and had to employ an 
amanuensis and a mechanical contrivance for writ¬ 
ing. Luckily, his means were ample and he was 
able to pursue his studies, in the midst of a remark¬ 
able literary coterie, until he was thirty years old, 
when he determined to write his History of Ferdi¬ 
nand and Isabella. The composition of the work 
occupied him eleven years, and the author expended 
much money in the accumulation of material. It 
was immediately translated into five European lan¬ 
guages, and became the most celebrated work of 
history written on this side of the Atlantic. Pres¬ 
cott’s Conquest of Mexico (1843), Conquest of Peru 
(1847), and Philip the SecoJid (1855-1858), were 
not less successful. He also edited Robertson’s 
, Charles V., and collected from the reviews a volume 
of Miscellanies. Three more volumes of Philip the 
Second were planned. Prescott died in Boston in 
1859, and his life was written by his friend George 
Ticknor. Not since Milton has so high a reputa¬ 
tion been won by a man practically blind ; and no 
historian in the language has written in a more 
graceful and eloquent style. 

27. John Lothrop Motley was born in 1814, 
studied at Harvard and Gottingen, wrote two slight 
novels, and in 1856 published The Rise of the Dutch 
Republic, which has attracted readers and translators 
only fewer than Prescott’s. Less ornate than Pres¬ 
cott, Motley is not less readable, and as a political 






70 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

analyst he is unexcelled. The History of the United 
Netherlands was published between 1861 and 1868, 
and the Life of John of Barneveld in 1874. Motley, 
like Irving, Bancroft, Lowell, Marsh, Boker, and 
Howells, represented the United States abroad. 
He died in 1877. 

28. Other Historians. —Jared Sparks, president 
of Harvard between 1849 and 1852, wrote many 
biographies and theological works, and brought out 
between 1834 and 1837, in twelve massive volumes, 
Washington’s writings, together with a life. In 
1840 he finished a similar edition of Franklin, in 
ten volumes. Both works are indispensable, as is 
Dr. Sparks’s Diplomatic Correspondence of the Ameri¬ 
can Revolution (1830). Francis Parkman, like Pres¬ 
cott partially blind, is publishing a great work with 
the general title of France and England in North 
America, of which five parts had appeared in 1883. 
His style is singularly graceful, and he is the most 
readable of American historians save Prescott and 
Motley. John Foster Kirk, Prescott’s private sec¬ 
retary, has prepared a good and standard history of 
Charles the Bold, issued between 1863 and 1867. 
Richard Frothingham has written a complete mono¬ 
graph on the siege of Boston. Samuel Eliot, for¬ 
merly president of Trinity College, is the author of 
an elaborate History of Liberty. A great library of 
serviceable popular histories by the brothers Jacob 
and John S. C. Abbott were justly honored by Pres- 




FICTION.—JAMES FENIMORE COORER. 71 

ident Lincoln’s remark that he had derived from 
them all his knowledge of history. The larger 
works of John S. C. Abbott are injured by their 
partisan tone, though they are very readable. Geo. 
W. Greene’s Historical View of the Americafi Revolu¬ 
tion is the best condensed record of the time, and 
excels in its analysis of causes of events. His life 
of his grandfather, General Nathanael Greene, was 
called out in response to Bancroft’s strictures. 
Parke Godwin published in i860 the first volume of 
a history of France, never since continued. 

29. Travellers. — As next of kin to historians, 
mention should be made of a few travellers, though 
in this department we have less to boast of: Elisha 
Kent Kane, Charles F. Hall, and Isaac I. Hayes in 
the Arctic region; John Ross Browne, Thomas W. 
Knox, and Commodore Charles Wilkes in voyages 
around the world ; E. G. Squier and J. L. Stephens 
in Central America; Eugene Schuyler in Turkistan; 
and Henry M. Stanley in Central Africa. Benson 
J. Lossing’s Field-book of the Revolution is both travel 
and history. 

30. Fiction.—James Fenimore Cooper.— 
Charles Brockden Brown began the long line of 
American novels, but James Fenimore Cooper was 
the first writer of fiction to be extensively read. 
Born in Burlington, New Jersey, in 1789, he spent 
his boyhoo<J at Cooperstown, Otsego County, New 
York, a village founded by his father in 1786. 





72 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITER A TURE. 

Having studied three years at Yale, he entered the 
navy as midshipman in 1805, remaining in the 
service six ye’ars, and acquiring that knowledge of 
the sea which he afterwards put to such good use 
in his books. Precaution , his first novel, was pub¬ 
lished anonymously in 1821. It met with no great 
success, being a tame story of the English type, 
though subsequently Cooper’s readers gave it a 
higher place in their esteem. The Spy (1821) found 
a multitude of admirers, and was republished in 
Europe in many translations. This story, as well 
as The Pioneers , issued the next year, was thor¬ 
oughly national, and Cooper thenceforward occu¬ 
pied as his own the field of wild life in the West. 
His novels were full of romantic interest, and 
showed the public that American scenery and life 
furnished as good a foundation for fiction as the 
castles of Europe. The Last of the Mohicans (1826) 
is one of the best of the remarkable group of stories 
called the Leatherstocking Tales. Cooper was 
American through and through. He did not hesi¬ 
tate in some of his later stories to satirize the 
“ louder ” national characteristics •, but to him more 
than any other author is due the increasing atten¬ 
tion to home subjects and heroes. From his writ¬ 
ings, undoubtedly, a part of the English public got 
the impression, which it has with difficulty cor¬ 
rected, that buffaloes and Indians form the most 
conspicuous features in our civilization. Half of 








































NA THANIEL HA WTHORNE. 73 

Cooper’s better works were devoted to the sea, the 
most successful being The Pilot (1823) and The Red 
Rover (1827). Cooper’s quarrels with his country¬ 
men were numerous, chiefly because he thought 
them lukewarm in national pride; and he increased 
the hostility of the newspaper press by a multitude 
of libel suits, in many of which he was successful. 
The Pathfinder and The Deer slayer appeared in 
1840 and 1841 ; and Afioat and Ashore three years 
later. An elaborate Naval History of the United 
States and a series of biographies of naval officers 
were among the other writings of this industrious 
author, who by no means confined himself to a 
single field. His last book was The Ways of the 
Hour, an attack on the system of trial by jury, in 
the form of a story, somewhat in the style later 
adopted by Charles Reade. Cooper’s novels have 
won high praise from the first critical authorities, 
including Bryant and Prescott, but his later books, 
with no diminution of merit, found fewer readers 
than their predecessors. Cooper virtually had the 
field to himself, at first, and the novelty of his 
subjects aroused in his writings an interest which 
their intrinsic literary merits hardly warranted. In 
later years a host of imitators have written more 
exaggerated Indian stories, which long formed the 
principal literary diet of the lower classes, though 
their popularity is now somewhat waning. 

31. Nathaniel Hawthorne, whom James Rus- 



74 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITER A TURE. 

sell Lowell has called the greatest imaginative 
writer since Shakespeare, was born in Salem in 
1804, of an old colonial family, some of whose 
members, as a matter of conviction, had taken part 
in the persecutions which made the early history of 
that town so famous. In later years the Haw¬ 
thornes (who spelled their name Hathorne) had 
followed the sea, and Nathaniel’s father, a ship¬ 
master, died at Surinam in 1808. From his mother 
the boy inherited a morbid disposition, that lady 
having so grieved over her husband’s loss that for 
thirty years she insisted on isolating herself in her 
room. Nathaniel was a feeble child, but was able 
to enter Bowdoin College at seventeen, where, as 
has been seen, Longfellow was his classmate. His 
intimate friend, however, was Franklin Pierce, a 
member of the class next above him. On gradua¬ 
tion he returned to Salem, and outdid his mother 
in absolute seclusion, writing all day, and stalking 
over the ancient town at night. Fanshawe , an ; 

anonymous romance, was published in Boston in 
1828, but was never acknowledged by the author. ! 
For years it was a great literary curiosity, but has j 
lately been reprinted. It is a somewhat crude pro¬ 
duction, but full of the power which afterwards 
made the author famous. In 1836 Hawthorne 
became the editor of the American Magazine of 
Useful K?iowledge , published in Boston; of which, 
though nominally editor, Hawthorne was, in fact, 








/U- 





























* 


























•' 































































NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 


75 


the sole author. He had destroyed many of his 
earlier pieces, but by 1837 he was able to collect 
enough stories to form the Twice Told Tales. Long¬ 
fellow and other critics saw and said what they 
were, but the general public failed to appreciate 
them. The first edition contained only half the 
present work, and a revision, with a second series, 
appeared in 1842, and found a few more readers. 

! Bancroft, who was then collector of the port of 
Boston, gave Hawthorne a place in the custom¬ 
house in that city, which he lost on the accession of 
Harrison in 1841. A short sojourn at the famous 
Brook Farm in West Roxbury followed; and every¬ 
where the shy, mysterious romancer was the shrewd¬ 
est and minutest of observers. In 1843 he took up 
his abode in the old Ripley house at Concord, close 
by the bridge where the “ embattled farmers stood.” 
Hawthorne’s residence in old houses was partly 
from accident and partly from choice; but of all 
his homes this was most to his liking, and in the 
volumes called Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) he 
has celebrated it in the choicest language. This 
collection of stories and sketches was in the same 
general style as the Twice Told Tales. Emerson 
had been a former occupant of the house, and Haw¬ 
thorne’s Concord neighbors were Emerson, Thoreau, 
and the younger Ellery Channing. In 1846 Haw¬ 
thorne became surveyor at the Salem custom-house, 
and, as usual, made his residence there an oppor- 



?6 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITER A TURE. 

tunity for the industrious collection of literary 
material. The advent of the Whigs into power, for 
the second time, once more displaced him, and he 
retired to a little cottage in Lenox, Massachusetts, 
having published in 1850 The Scarlet Letter, a very 
powerful and dramatic colonial romance, written in 
faultless English. At Lenox Hawthorne was un¬ 
usually industrious, writing in 1851 The House of the 
Seven Gables , embodying his Salem sight-seeings,— 
a story still more intense and solemn than any of 
its predecessors. The Blithedale Romance (1852) was 
founded on his Brook Farm experiences, and com¬ 
bined the loftiest humor with the deepest pathos. 
Zenobia, the heroine, is probably the greatest of 
Hawthorne’s creations. The same year, 1852, Haw- 
thorne wrote a third series of Twice Told Tales, and 
a campaign life of Pierce, for whom, ever since his 
college days, he had maintained a strong friendship. 
Hawthorne’s firm adherence to Democratic opinions 
was singular, for he was the last man in the country 
whom one would have suspected of any political 
interest whatever. Thoreau was not more unworldly, 
and yet Hawthorne constantly endeavored to help 
his party in every way. There was no suspicion of 
time-serving, and when, in 1853, the romancer was 
given the Liverpool consulate, both parties rejoiced. 
For the first time in his life Hawthorne was in easy 
circumstances, though a thriftier man would have 
made more money out of his lucrative position. 


OTHER NOVELISTS. 


77 


Resigning in 1857, he spent three years in England, 
France, and Italy. His English and Italian Note- 
Books, published posthumously, are full of these 
experiences of one of the best of sight-seers. The 
American Note-Books consist of his home diaries, 
and contain hints for a hundred books, which none 
but Hawthorne ever could write. Our Old Home , 
sights and scenes in England, was published in 
1863, during the author’s life-time. The Marble 
Faun appeared in i860,— an Italian romance, by 
some considered his best work. Hawthorne had 
brought out three juvenile books between 1851 and 
1853,— being stories of history and mythology; and 
after his death were found the fragments called 
The Ancestral Footstep, Doctor Grimshawe's Secret , 
Septimius Felton, and The Dolliver Romance ,— all of 
which, in order, were studies for the same never- 
finished book. So ends the list of the works of the 
foremost American writer. 

32. Other Novelists. —John Neal, one of the 
most long-lived and voluminous of our writers, was 
the author of several American tales. Another 
historical novelist was William Ware, a Unitarian 
clergyman, whose Aurelian, Julian , and Zenobia, 
illustrated life in ancient Rome. Sylvester Judd, 
also a Unitarian minister, wrote in 1845 Margaret: 
a tale of the Real and the Ideal; which has by some 
been considered the greatest of our works of fiction, 
while others find its whims and crotchets so numer 



78 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

ous as to make it almost unreadable. This work 
was illustrated by Darley in a remarkable series of 
outline designs. William Gilmore Simms, one of 
the leading Southern writers of the century, was 
born in 1806 and died in 1870. He wrote many 
poems, but is chiefly remembered by his novels, 
among which are The Yemassee , The Partisan , and 
Beauchampe. John Esten Cooke, of Virginia, has 
written less, but his novels of Southern life are 
equally meritorious. The best of them is The Vir¬ 
ginia Comedians, an admirable picture of the courtly 
Virginian of the elder day. Charles F. Briggs, a 
native of Nantucket and all his life a journalist in 
New York, wrote contemporary novels pleasantly 
combining satire and humor; Harry Franco in 1839, 
and The Haunted Merchant in 1843. Richard B. 
Kimball has also illustrated in fiction the every-day 
life of New York city. Dr. William Starbuck Mayo, 
in Never Again , has likewise held the mirror up 
to modern American society. John P. Kennedy, 
secretary of the navy under Fillmore, wrote good 
novels of old-time society, in his Swallow Barn and 
Horse-Shoe Robinson. Herman Melville has written 
lively sea tales. Thus our indigenous fiction pre¬ 
sents a good showing. Of female writers the num¬ 
ber is of late years greatly increasing. Harriet 
Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), a novel 
directed against slavery, has had the greatest pop¬ 
ular success of any American book, having sold be- 










































EMERSON AND THE CONCORD AC/THORS. 79 

tween five and six hundred thousand copies in this 
country alone, and having been forty times trans¬ 
lated. Her later novels, though superior from a 
literary point of view, have naturally appealed to 
a more limited interest. The Minister's Wooing and 
The Pearl of Orr's Island are faithful New England 
pictures, and Oldtown Folks , one of her later books, 
introduces her best creation, Sam Lawson. Next 
to Uncle Tom, as a literary success, came The Wide, 
Wide World of the sisters Susan and Anna Warner, 
published in 1850. Other popular female novelists 
have been Catherine M. Sedgwick, the author of 
Hope Leslie; Miriam Coles Harris, who wrote Rnt- 
'ledge; and Maria S. Cummins, whose Lamplighter 
I was one of our most successful novels. “ Grace 
Greenwood” (Sara J. Lippincott) and “Fanny 
Fern” (Mrs. James Parton) have written sketches 
and stories of interest, though mostly ephemeral in 
value. 

33. Emerson and the Concord Authors.— 
Ralph Waldo Emerson is the most distinguished of 
American essayists, and his influence on thought 
and style has been marked for forty years, making 
Concord our literary Mecca. The descendant of 
eight generations of clergymen, Emerson was born 
in Boston in 1803, and graduated at Harvard in 
1821. Between 1829 and 1832 he was a Unitarian 
| minister, but left the pulpit in. consequence of his 
radical opinions. Having made a short trip to 





SO A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


Europe, he began his career as a lecturer, in which 
capacity he became more famous than any other 
American author. A slender book on Nature made 
a great stir among thoughtful people in 1839. In 
1838 he had delivered his celebrated address before 
the divinity school at Cambridge, and his personal 
influence became very great in forming the “Trans¬ 
cendental ” movement, an attempt to abandon tra¬ 
ditional forms and society’s chains and to get back 
to nature’s freedom of thought and rectitude of 
action. # The Dial was the organ of the school in 
1840, and Margaret Fuller, Emerson, Alcott:, 
Thoreau, and the younger Channing wrote for it 
Emerson’s two series of Essays appeared in 1841 
and 1844; Representative Men , a course of lectures 
in 1850; English Traits in 1856; The Conduct of 
Life in i860; Society and Solitude in 1870; and 
Letters and Social Aims in 1876; in which year a 
carefully revised edition of his poems was also 
published. These poems are full of high thought, 
often expressed with rare beauty. Both in poetry 
and in prose his influence is as spontaneous as 
that of nature; he announces, and lets others 
plead. Henry D. Thoreau was a recluse who once 
lived on the shores of Walden Pond, in Concord, 
providing for his simple wants by surveying and 
gardening. Walden is his best book; but in seven 
other volumes he carries the reader straight to 
Nature’s heart. Amos Bronson Alcott, at first an 



















































































































































































































































EMERSON AND THE CONCORD AUTHORS 8 1 

educator, has been the sole representative in this 
country of the art of imparting knowledge by “ con¬ 
versations,” which he has held for many years in 
various parts of the United States, though residing 
in Concord. Of latter years he has collected some 
of his writings into books, and wrote a volume of 
sonnets in his eighty-second year. Williafti Ellery 
Channing, a nephew of the famous divine, has 
written a biography of Thoreau and four volumes 
of poems. The best poetry, save Emerson’s, writ¬ 
ten during the period of Transcendental influence 
in America was that of Jones Very, of Salem — in 
personal life a recluse, but in spiritual stature 
among the very first of our poets. Emerson com¬ 
pared his sonnets with the utterances of the Hebrew 
prophets, and declared them inferior only “because 
they are indebted to the Hebrew muse for their tone 
and genius.” Very felt himself to be in constant 
communion with the Divine spirit, whose messages 
he strove to read from the books of nature and the 
soul. Ele chiefly wrote in the sonnet form, and 
many of his lines are deep in thought and strong 
in expression. Hawthorne — by far the sagest 
American critic, when he spoke—called Very “a 
poet whose voice is scarcely heard among us by 
reason of its depth; ” but at another time, with 
that clear sense which governed his every word, 
stated his belief that Very’s limitations arose from 
his “ want of a sense of the ludicrous.” 



82 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITER A TURE. 

34. Miscellaneous Writers. — George William 
Curtis, whose style entitles him to be called the 
American Charles Lamb, has written a great num¬ 
ber of essays in periodicals; two graceful books of 
Eastern travel; The Potiphar Papers , the best social 
satire produced in this country; and Trumps , a read¬ 
able noVel. George Ticknor, professor of modern 
languages at Harvard between 1817 and 1835, P ro ' 
duced in 1849 an elaborate History of Spanish Lit¬ 
erature, twice since revised, and accepted here and 
abroad as the standard. Edwin P. Whipple is the 
most faithful of American critics, and in his several 
volumes has given a thorough review of many of the 
best English and American books,— his researches 
in Elizabethan literature being his chief work. 
George S. Hillard wrote in 1853 a good account 
of travel in Italy; and another book of Italian 
thought and experience, somewhat more artistic, 
was published by Charles Eliot Norton in 1859. 
The Two Years before the Mast of Richard H. 
Dana, Jr., a record of personal experience, is the 
American classic of travel. In books of local 
'Observation and experience, the White Mountains 
Lave been well described by Thomas Starr King; 
and the peculiar life of Cape Cod in the stories of 
Charles Nordhoff. The Letters from New York of 
Mrs. Lydia Maria Child made a sensation in their 
day. Mrs. Child’s Progress of Religious Ldeas (1855) 
and Aspirations of the World (1878) are valuable con- 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. 83 

tributions to the study of the science of religion. 
Her Appeal in behalf of that Class of Americans 
called Africans (1.832) is noteworthy as the first 
contribution of a woman to the antislavery litera¬ 
ture of the country. It was an admirable little 
work, and helped to carry Wendell Phillips into 
the antislavery movement. Margaret Fuller, an 
ardent Transcendentalist, and editor of 1 he Dial\ 
left no permanent literary memorial in book form, 
but in editorial and critical writing strongly affected 
the liberal thought of her time. Henry Reed wrote 
literary and historical criticisms. Samuel G. Good¬ 
rich put history and natural history into popular 
forms, and wrote in readable fashion on all sorts of 
subjects. H. W. Herbert first dignified field sports 
by making them the subject of well-written books. 
Donald G. Mitchell wrote Dream-Life and The 
Reveries of a Bachelor, which have never lost 
a strong hold on popularity; and he has also 
treated farm subjects pleasantly, and is the author 
of Dr. Johns , a successful novel. Dr. Edward 
Robinson, in his Biblical Researches , published 
between 1841 and 1856, produced a work which is 
considered a standard in all countries. He was the 
father of biblical archaeology in America. Several 
standard editions of Shakespeare have been edited 
in this country, chief among them being those of 
Richard Grant White and Horace Howard Furness. 
Delia Bacon and Nathaniel Holmes have supported 


84 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

the theory that Lord Bacon wrote the plays. Dr. 
J. G. Holland was a sensible and plain-spoken pop¬ 
ular essayist, and wrote some fair novels of Ameri¬ 
can life,— Miss Gilbert's Career , Arthur Bonnicastle y 
and The Story of Sevenoaks being the best of them. 
As a poet he has been equally popular, though with 
less deserts. Henry T. Tuckerman, in numerous 
books and a host of essays, did good service to 
native literature and art. 

35. Scientific and Special Writers. — In law 
and medicine the number of American books is of 
course large, but none save the Commentaries on 
American Law of James Kent and the Interna- 
tional Law of Henry Wheaton — both classics — 
need be mentioned here ; nor can the many writers 
on science be specified, whose works are for the 
most part connected with literature by a slender 
thread. The dictionaries of Noah Webster and 
Joseph E. Worcester; the philological works of 
William D. Whitney, George P. Marsh, Francis J. 
Child, S. S. Haldeman, E. A. Sophocles, F. A. 
March, and James Hadley; the botanical writings 
of John Torrey and Asa Gray; the mathematical 
and astronomical publications of Nathaniel Bow- 
ditch, Elias Loomis, Benjamin Pierce, and Simon 
Newcomb; the ethnological works of H. R. School¬ 
craft, H. H. Bancroft, and C. C. Jones, Jr.; the 
books on birds by J. J. Audubon, Elliott Coues, and 
T. M. Brewer; the geological treatises of Louis 





SCIENTIFIC AND SPECIAL WRITERS. 85 

Agassiz, Edward Hitchcock, and James D. Dana; 
and the physical geographies of Arnold Guyot, are 
some of the best of our contributions to knowledge. 
W. J. Hardee, Winfield Scott, H. W. Halleck, and 
George B. McClellan have published books on 
military science. In political economy Henry C. 
Carey has strongly favored protection; and Dr. 
Theodore D. Woolsey, formerly president of Yale, 
has long been an authority on international law and 
political science. 


CHAPTER IV. 


AFTER 1861. 

i. Literature of the Civil War. —It is still 
convenient to follow the division of time by wars, 
omitting that with Mexico, which formed no break 
in current history. As in the Revolution and the 
war of 1812, very little that was notable was added 
to the literature of the country by the civil war 
of 1861. Most of the poets wrote one or two 
stirring pieces, and many new writers came into 
notice by the publication of meritorious occasional 
verse. But as a rule the creative powers of our 
best authors seemed somewhat benumbed, though, 
strangely enough, books and readers greatly mul¬ 
tiplied between 1861 and 1864, partly in conse¬ 
quence of the largely increased circulation of the 
periodical press. Immediately on the close of the 
struggle, and even during its progress, many popu¬ 
lar histories were hurried upon the market, but of 
course the events described were yet too fresh in 
mind to permit impartiality on either side. A vast 
Rebellion Record , edited by Frank Moore, has pre¬ 
served plenty of material for the future writer. 
This useful work is arranged under three divisions; 
a diary of events, a reissue of leading documents 


LITERATURE OF THE CIVIL WAR. 87 

of importance, and a liberal selection from popular 
poetry and newspaper incidents on both sides. Of 
the histories that have thus far appeared, those by 
Horace Greeley and Alexander H. Stephens are 
fullest in their accounts of the antislavery contest 
which preceded and attended the war; while that 
by Dr. John W. Draper, a student of politics and 
science, is the nearest approach yet made to an 
unpartisan record. The first volume of Mr. Gree¬ 
ley’s history (which is comprised in two) is more 
valuable than the second, for in it a life-long spec¬ 
tator and combatant in the antislavery struggle 
records the events with which he was so closely 
connected. Mr. Stephens’s work lays great stress 
upon the rise and development of the doctrine of 
state rights, of which the author was ai able 
defender. Elaborate as is Mr. Greeley’s story of 
the slavery agitation, a still larger and more valu¬ 
able history thereof is contained in Vice-President 
Wilson’s Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in Amer¬ 
ica, comprised in three volumes. Mr. Wilson’s 
knowledge of political history was as extensive as 
Mr. Greeley’s, and the judicial quality of his mind 
somewhat more marked. He had the advantage, 
furthermore, of writing long after the close of the 
war, instead of in its midst. This history was the 
closing, and in some sense the most valuable, work 
of his life. Many of the generals engaged on either 
side have published their reminiscences of cam- 


88 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


paigns, at greater or less length. Of these, General 
Sherman’s were at once the most important and 
outspoken, and called out many replies from injured 
officers. Lieutenant-General Scott published in 
1864 two volumes of autobiography, having a some- j 
what modest literary and historical value. 

2. Poets. — Of recent years American poetry has 1 
been somewhat influenced by the English pre- ; 
Raphaelites, whose methods and tastes Poe, to a 
certain extent, had foreshadowed twenty years j 
before. A renewed interest in purely national or 
local subjects, in this country, accompanied, rather 
than was caused by, the new-romanticism of the 
English writers of the Swinburne school, who have 
found in our Whitman and Miller greater merits to 
admire than in the more conventional writers whom 
the majority of readers are accustomed to revere. 
Their celebration of the wilder elements in our life, 
and their freedom from restraint, have seemed ad¬ 
mirable to London-bred critics; and their English 
friends have doubtless taken pleasure in singling 
out for special praise writers whose clientage was 
not so numerous in this country, and whose subjects 
would seem stranger in London than in New York. 
The old inattention to our literature, on the part of 
Englishmen, has given place to a somewhat inju¬ 
dicious and undiscriminating praise. But, fostered 
by home development and foreign admiration, an 
original and excellent element in American liter- 



BAYARD TAYLOR . 89 

ature has rapidly grown within the past twenty 
years. The great majority of our writers, however, 
have been content to work faithfully in the old 
paths, and many living authors, popularly assigned 
to the second rank, may fairly be called the peers 
of some of their predecessors of higher reputation. 

3. Bayard Taylor had acquired a substantial 
literary reputation before the .date at which this 
chapter begins; but since his future renown will 
chiefly rest, doubtless, upon his volumes of poems 
published since 1862, it is well to enter his name 
in this place. He was born at Kennett Square, a 
Pennsylvania country town, in 1825, and while a 
very young man became famous for a vivacious 
account of a pedestrian tour in Europe. California, 
Egypt, Asia Minor, India, Japan, and other coun¬ 
tries were afterwards visited by the indefatigable 
tourist, whose numerous books of travel proved to 
have great popular interest, and permanent value 
for reference. In 1863 Mr. Taylor published his 
first novel, Hannah Thurston, which was followed 
within the next seven years by John Godfrey's Fort- 
nnes, The Story of Kennett, and Joseph atid his 
Friend. These four novels, besides ingeniousness 
of plot and cleverness of situation, are noted for 
their accurate pictures of American life, especially 
In the Quaker region of Pennsylvania, which the 
author knew thoroughly. Between 1844 and 1855, 
Mr. Taylor put forth seven volumes of poetry, 


90 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

chiefly noteworthy for lyrical excellence. The Poefs 
Journal (1862), The Picture of St. John (1866), The 
Masque of the Gods (1872), Lars (1873), and The 
Prophet (1874), a Mormon drama, are more elab¬ 
orate works. Prince Deukalion , an allegorical 
drama of social progress — ambitious but not suc¬ 
cessful— appeared in 1878. Some of his longer 
poems have been produced with a rapidity recalling 
the Italian improvisatori. The Echo Club (published 
in 1876, though written in 1872) is a series of clever 
imitations of the leading poets of the century. A 
translation of both parts of Faust appeared in 1870 
and 1871, in which the original metres were repro¬ 
duced with surprising faithfulness. 

4. Richard Henry Stoddard, a native of Hing- 
ham, Massachusetts, is the author of nine volumes 
of short poems, showing poetic spirit and a graceful 
touch, on many themes of nature and life. He has 
been an editor of many collections of verse, and of 
several volumes of literary reminiscence. 

5. John Godfrey Saxe, born in Vermont in 1816, 
has been more successful than any other American 
poet in classical travesties and in witty turns of 
language. His collected poems do not fill a large 
volume, but are full of rollicking humor. As a son¬ 
neteer Mr. Saxe has won a good place. His humor¬ 
ous poems with a moral are neatly pointed, and his 
fables and legends are often happy, whether their 
subjects are old or new. 




WALT WHITMAN. 


91 


6 . John Townsend Trowbridge, born in 1827, 
first became known as a writer of excellent juvenile 
stories signed by Paul Creyton. Father Brighthopes 
and The Old Battle-Ground are the best of them. 
Neighbor Jackwood (1857) has hardly been surpassed 
as a picture of American home life in the country. 
Mr. Trowbridge’s other novels are Cudjo's Cave, 
The Three Scouts , Lucy Arlyn , and Neighbors' Wives . 
The two first dealt with the civil war, during which 
they were very popular. Upon his poems, though 
few in number, Mr. Trowbridge has expended his 
greatest care. The Vagabonds (1864) is an excellent 
union of pathos and humor; in his lesser lyrics and 
in the five poems grouped under the title of The 
Book of Gold (1877) subjects of love, or life, or 
humor, are handled in pleasing fashion. 

7. Walt Whitman was born at West Hills, Long 
Island, in 1819, and began life as a school-teacher 
and literary man, writing rather feeble stories and 
indifferent poems for the magazines, in the ordinary 
style, under the name of Walter Whitman. In 
1855, reducing Walter to Walt, he printed in Brook¬ 
lyn a peculiar volume called Leaves of Grass ,— 
rhapsody rather than poetry, being neither rhymed 
nor versified. This work, which has several times 
been enlarged, is devoted to a large variety of sub¬ 
jects, many of the poems being personal, while all 
are pervaded with a love of liberty in conscience 
and politics. The catalogue style is a prevailing 


92 A*PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

blemish, and Whitman’s overruling desire to be nat¬ 
ural makes him fall into real affectations; but there 
ar£ some strong and fine lines in the poems. O 
Captain, my Captain, shows that he is not fettered 
by rhyme. When Lilacs last in the Door yard 
bloomed is the best poem evoked by the assassina¬ 
tion of President Lincoln. Many of the poems 
in Leaves of Grass are grossly indecent, and the 
“ upward look ” is conspicuously absent from Whit¬ 
man’s verse. The world’s great poets have been 
morally in advance of their times; Whitman lags 
behind the average sentiment of his day and 
country. 

8 . Joaquin Miller, whose real name is Cincin- 
natus Heine Miller, has been miner, Nicaraguan, 
Indian resident, and county judge. Songs of the 
Sierras, wild poems of the West, somewhat polished 
in versification by a careful study and thorough 
admiration of Byron and Swinburne, appeared in 
London in 1870. Songs of the Snnlands, and The 
Ship in the Desert are later poems, and the author 
has written an Italian novel, an account of life 
among the Indians, a collection of graphic prose 
sketches of life in the far West, called The First 
Families of the Sierras, a society story in verse, The 
Baroness of New York, etc. Miller is a sort of 
Oregon Byron in his freedom of spirit and his love 
of rhythmical luxuriance, and he has cultivated with 
zeal the far Western field in literature. Old-world 


JOHN HAY. 


95 * 


subjects, however, are not unknown to his hands* 
Whitman and Miller are the chief American kindred 
of the English pre-Raphaelites. 

9. Francis Bret Harte, a native of Albany, has 
written short stories and sketches of California life, 
having wonderful wit and pathos, of which The Luck 
of Roaring Camp and The Outcasts of Poker Flat are 
the best. Of his poems some are in dialect, The 
Heathen Chinee having had the widest circulation of 
any recent poem. The author has written a long 
novel, Gabriel Conroy; and Thankful Blossom , a. 
novelette of Revolutionary times in New Jersey* 
Two Men of Sandy Bar , a drama, is a stage pres¬ 
entation of some of the characters of the mining; 
region, including a curious export to California,, 
Colonel Culpepper Starbottle. Mr. Harte’s Eastern 
sketches — notably that of The Disappointed Office- 
seeker at Washington — are only less good than those- 
of the West. His Condensed Novels , prose bur¬ 
lesques several times revised, are clever. 

10. John Hay. —The popular dialect poetry of 
the time finds its best illustration in the Jim Bludso 
of John Hay, a native of Indiana, who was Pres¬ 
ident Lincoln’s secretary during the war. A volume 
called Pike County Ballads includes this poem and 
others as good. Mr. Hay was the originator of a 
fashion in which he found a troop of imitators but 
no equals, owing to his slow method of composition 
and his faithful literary artisanship. The same 


k 94 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITER A TURE. 

honesty appears in a very different form in Castilian 
Days , a prose volume of finished Spanish sketches. 
Other original writers of dialect verse have been 
Charles Godfrey Leland, who in various Dans Breit- 
mann volumes put the semi-Americanized German 
into amusing verse; Charles G. Halpine, whose 
Miles O’Reilly was a favorite Hibernian figure 
during the war; and W. M. Carleton, who, without 
the aid of misspelling, has celebrated the average 
Western farmer and his wife. 

ii. Thomas Bailey Aldrich is one of the many 
natives of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who have 
won success in literature. His boyhood was passed 
in that ancient seaport town, in New Orleans, and 
in New York. Before he was twenty he became 
an industrious worker on the New York press, and 
his first book was published when he was but nine¬ 
teen. The Ballad of Bahie Bell (afterwards enti¬ 
tled Baby Bell), a faultless poem of child-death, has 
had for many years a permanent place in popular 
favor. Between 1855 an< ^ 1 86:2 Mr. Aldrich pub¬ 
lished several small volumes of poems, a pretty 
little juvenile story in prose, and Out of his Head, 
a curious romance never reissued by the author. 
In 1865 Mr. Aldrich collected his complete poet¬ 
ical works in a single volume. He has always 
been his own severest critic, and has sternly re¬ 
jected poems the public would prefer to keep, be¬ 
sides revising others which seemed excellent at 




y 

























































EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 95 

first. This collected edition was again carefully- 
revised ten years later, and put forth under the title 
of Cloth of Gold. Flower and Thorn (1876) com¬ 
prises all the additional poems which the author 
cares to preserve. Mr. Aldrich’s genius is of a rare 
and delicate quality; his numerous lyrics are full of 
melody, and his few sonnets are among the best 
written by American poets. Friar fero?ne’s Beauti¬ 
ful Book and Garnaut Hall, longer pieces in blank 
verse, are in a narrative style which the author has 
seldom cultivated. After a considerable pause, Mr. 
Aldrich began to write prose once more, in the form 
of short stories and sketches, having an exquisite 
humor, and chiefly notable for surprising cleverness 
of situation. The Story of a Bad Boy (1869), his 
second juvenile, reproduced in its Tom Bailey the 
author’s youthful experiences in Portsmouth, which, 
as “ Rivermouth,” appears in nearly all his stories. 
Prudence Palfrey (1874), The Queen of Sheba (1877), 
and The Stillwater Tragedy (1880) are novels of 
moderate length, having, in substance, the finish 
and quiet humor of the shorter stories. 

12. Edmund Clarence Stedman is likewise emi¬ 
nent as a lyrist. A member of the Yale class of 
1853, he has for the most of his life been a banker, 
though writing constantly for the press. The Dia¬ 
mond Wedding (1859) first attracted general atten¬ 
tion as a brilliant social satire, though the author 
was already doing better work in shorter poems. 


9 6 A PRIMER OF AMERICA AT LITERATURE. 

Alice of Monmouth, a war story in verse, succeeded 
Poems, Lyric and Idyllic. The Blameless Prince was 
Mr. Stedman’s third volume. These three books, 
though each beginning with a long poem, were 
chiefly excellent for purely lyrical beauty. In 1873 
a collected edition appeared. Of its contents the 
poems called The Doorstep, Toujours Amour, and 
Laura, my Darling (to his wife) have been most 
liked, and have found a permanent place in the 
anthologies. Hawthorne, and Other Poems (1877), 
a thin volume, includes the later pieces, the first 
being the finest tribute yet paid to the memory of 
the romancer. In his Victorian Poets (1876) is pre¬ 
sented an elaborate review of the entire body of 
contemporary English verse. It is one of the most 
judicial of American books of criticism, and is 
especially just toward the new romantic school, with 
the works of the humblest members of which Mr. 
Stedman is intimately acquainted. It is written in 
a somewhat artificial style. 

13. The Piatts, John James and his wife Sallie 
M. Bryan, have written no long pieces, but have 
been, in a sense true of very few other American 
authors, “poets’poets.” Mrs. Piatt’s conceits and 
moods are more marked than those of her husband, 
but in her poems pathos and sentiment are real. 
Her subjects are novel and their elaboration deli¬ 
cate. Mr. Piatt’s condensation of style never be¬ 
comes obscure, and he is happy in his descriptions 
of natural scenery. 


OTHER POETS. 


97 


14. Other Poets. — In the Southern newspapers, 
during the civil war, there was a considerable amount 
of war poetry, the best of which was written by 
Henry Timrod, whose Spring is his finest poem. 
Paul H. Hayne, of Georgia, is one of our best 
sonneteers, and his poetry catches the spirit of 
Southern scenery. He is less successful in depict¬ 
ing the scenes and portraying the character of medi- 
aevalism. Of northern poets made famous by their 
war poems, the chief not hitherto mentioned are 
Henry Howard Brownell, who wrote spirited naval 
pieces; Forceythe Willson, the author of The Old 
Sergeant and of non-martial poems of still greater 
excellence ; Elbridge J. Cutler, a Harvard professor, 
whose ringing and finished Wdr Lyrics, though 
admirable, he modestly printed in the smallest of 
editions; and Thomas Buchanan Read, who found 
in his Sherida?i's Ride a popularity never won by his 
previous poems. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe’s Battle 
Hymn of the Republic was more famous during the 
struggle than any other single lyric. George P. 
Lathrop’s Rose and Roof-Tree includes pieces which, 
while thoroughly original, are half Tennysonian in 
their treatment of landscape. Sidney Lanier wrote 
in 1876 a curious Centennial Ode to Columbia , which 
aims to be in poetry some such thing as Wagner’s 
music is in orchestration. Of recent female poets 
of high rank the number is surprisingly large, and 
half the poems in current periodicals are by women. 


98 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITER A TURE. 

As a rule they write short poems of moqd or 
description rather than of creation or narration. 
Margaret J. Preston, Elizabeth Akers Allen, Rose 
Terry Cooke, Nora Perry, Lucy Larcom, Celia 
Thaxter, and Helen Fiske Jackson (“H. H.”) are 
the most eminent. Mrs. Thaxter’s poems of the 
sea are the fruit of long acquaintance f with the 
barren Isles of Shoals in New Hampshire. To 
Mrs. Jackson belongs the first place among the 
writers whom we have named. Soon after the 
appearance of her first volume of verse, in 1874, 
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “The poems of a 
lady who contents herself with the initials H. H. 
have rare merit of thought and expression, and will 
reward the reader for the careful attention which 
they require.” There is somewhat of the Emer¬ 
sonian mood and method in Mrs. Jackson’s poetry, 
which is the modern successor of The Dial verse of 
1840. Mrs. Jackson’s prose sketches in Bits of 
Travel and Bits of Talk excel in minute description. 

15, William Dean Howells, one of the first of 
recent writers, was born at Martinsville, Ohio, in 
1837. He was a country editor until i860, when he 
wrote a campaign life of Abraham Lincoln, which 
had a great circulation during that year. It was 
never acknowledged by the author, though as liter¬ 
ature it was nearly as good as Hawthorne’s life of 
Pierce. In 1861 Mr. Howells was given the polit¬ 
ically unimportant consulate at Venice. Never did 





















WILLIAM BEAM HOWELLS. 


99 


an author make better literary use of his position, 
at the same time performing its official duties faith¬ 
fully. Not until his return, in 1865, did he begin to 
publish the fruits of his Italian sight-seeings. Vene¬ 
tian Life appeared in 1866, and Italian Journeys the 
next year. Their descriptions were faithful, and 
their literary style of surprising excellence. After a 
brief period of editorship in New York, Mr. How¬ 
ells went to Boston as assistant editor of The Atlan¬ 
tic Monthly , the controlling editorship of which he 
assumed on the retirement of Mr. James T. Fields, 
in 1871. Suburban Sketches (1871) did for Cam¬ 
bridge what Venetian Life had done for Venice, 
though its descriptions of the university town were 
less direct, and included many pieces of delicate 
humor and not a few delightful character-sketches. 
Every one of Mr. Howells’s books, thus far, had 
increased his public of readers; but Their Wedding 
Journey (1872) multiplied them anew, and showed 
him to be, by humor and descriptive power, the best 
literary painter of contemporary American life in the 
better classes. A Chance Acquaintance and A Fore¬ 
gone Conclusion , two other novels, were equally suc¬ 
cessful in the same vein. His later novels have 
been The Lady of the Aroostook (1879), The Undis¬ 
covered Country (1880), A Fearful Responsibility 
(1881), Doctor Breen's Practice (1881), and A Mod¬ 
ern Instance (1882). In the last of them the cheery 
humor of his earlier books has been tempered by 


IOO A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

the realistic influence of Mr. Henry James, Jr. He 
is the author of two bright comedies: Out of the 
Question and A Counterfeit Presentment. In 186a 
a volume called Poems of Two Friends was written 
by Mr. Howells in conjunction with J. J. Piatt. 
His collected poems were afterVards issued in a 
single small volume. Many of them have become 
favorites, and their excellence of versification,, 
especially in hexameters, is marked. 

16. Theodore Winthrop, a native of Connecti¬ 
cut and a graduate of Yale College, was killed in 
the first set engagement of the war, at Big Bethel, 
Virginia, on June io, 1861. He had written a few 
spirited magazine sketches, and at his death three 
complete novels and a number of minor papers 
were found among his manuscripts. The novels ? 
Cecil Drceme , John Brent , and Edwin Brother toft, 
are the breeziest and heartiest of American works 
of fiction, and even their horses breathe a vital 
oxygen. The lesser sketches fill two volumes, 
mostly devoted to out-door papers of camp-life and 
travel. 

17. Edward Eggleston, born in Indiana in 1837, 
has found a special field in novels of pioneer life 
in the uncivilized outposts of western civilization. 
His first mature years were those of a Methodist 
itinerant and Sunday-school worker. One or two 
books for children have since been found excellent, 
but his first general recognition as ohe of the most 


HENRY JAMES , JR. 


101 


vigorous of American novelists followed the publi¬ 
cation of The Hoosier Schoolmaster, in 1871. The 
End of the World, The Mystery of Metropolisville, 
and The Circuit Rider, later stories, have similarly 
described to the letter the rough backwoods life of 
the hardy settlers of fifty years ago. These novels 
have been very popular in Europe, their vividness 
of description and unfamiliarity of subject being no 
less surprising to German readers than were Feni- 
more Cooper’s Indian tales at the time of their 
first appearance. 

18. Julian Hawthorne, a son of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, born in Boston in 1846, has found his 
advancement hindered rather than aided by the 
circumstance of his birth. In his novels, Bressant, 
Idolatry, Garth, Sebastian Strome, and Dust, and in 
his shorter stories, Mr. Hawthorne shows his 
father’s fondness for psychological and weird 
themes; but he treats them in a somewhat sensa¬ 
tional manner, and overcrowds his canvas with a 
confusion of figures. Mr. Hawthorne has resided 
abroad of late years ; and his sketches of German 
and English life and character have been uncom¬ 
monly accurate, though their truthfulness of descrip¬ 
tion have made some of them seem the work of a 
pitiless observer. These Saxon Studies and English 
Studies are worthy continuations of the elder Haw¬ 
thorne’s Our Old Home. 

19. Henry James, Jr., the first of realistic writers 


102 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

of contemporary fiction, describes men’s ways and 
words, and leaves the reader to infer their character 
therefrom. A Passionate Pilgrim contains the best 
of the magazine stories he wrote during his earlier 
years. Of his longer novels, Roderick Hudson, The 
American, Watch and Ward, and The Portrait of a 
Lady, are like highly finished statuettes, clear-cut 
and cold. Mr. James never works in the “large 
manner.” Some of his later stories — The Euro¬ 
peans and Washington Square — show a lack of that 
finish by which his first successes were won. His 
Transatlantic Sketches consist of the best of his con¬ 
tributions from abroad to American magazines and 
newspapers. 

20. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, a daughter of 
Professor Austin Phelps of the theological seminary 
at Andover, is another of the writers of the remark¬ 
able short stories which distinguish the present 
time. The chief of her lesser tales are collected 
in Men, Women, and Ghosts (1869). Besides many 
Sunday-school stories, Miss Phelps has written five 
novels, Hedged In (1870), The Silent Partner (1871), 
The Story of Avis (1877), a dramatic and highly- 
wrought record of the struggles of a woman’s soul, 
Friends: a Duet (1881), and Doctor Zay (1882). 
Mizz Phelps’s somewhat infrequent poems are col¬ 
lected in a volume called Poet A Studies . The Gates 
Ajar, an original book on heaven, made a great 
literary sensation in 1868. 































OTHER NOVELISTS . 


103 


21. Louisa May Alcott, a daughter of A. B. 
Alcott, is the best of American writers of juveniles. 
Little Women (1867) attained quick popularity. Its 
success in describing girl-life lay in its entire free¬ 
dom from artificiality and its cheeriness of spirit. 
Miss Alcott’s literary style is wholly natural, and 
she seems to take genuine pleasure in the charac¬ 
ters she creates. The bright New England boy 
and girl Miss Alcott knows very well, and her 
light humor and fertility of invention have made her 
other books for the young (eleven in number) equal 
favorites. Their merit is nearly uniform, and their 
readers are of all ages. Miss Alcott’s considerable 
novel of Work and her stories and sketches of adult 
life promise an elaborate work of fiction in the 
future. 

22. Harriet Prescott Spofford (born Harriet 
Elizabeth Prescott) is notable for the splendor of 
her style and the almost unhealthy luxuriance of 
her fancy. Sir Rohan's Ghost (1859), The Amber 
Gods (1863), Azarian (1864), The Thief in the Night, 
and New England Legends are her stories published 
in book form, though they represent but a small 
part of her printed writings. As the best example 
of her great powers of construction and elaboration 
may be mentioned the story of Midsummer and 
May u in the Amber Gods volume. A volume of 
Mrs. Spofford’s poems was published in 1881. 

23. Other Novelists. — George W. Cable, in his 


104 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE . 

short stories called Old Creole Days, and in his 
longer The Grandisswies and Madame Delphine, well 
introduces a new element in American fiction —the 
Creole life of Louisiana. Judge Albion W. Tour- 
gee achieved, during the political campaign of 1880, 
the greatest popular success since Uncle Tom’s 
Cabin, in A Fool’s Errand and Bricks without 
Straw, in which he set forth with satirical strength 
the alleged difficulties attending the attempt of 
Northern residents to settle in the “reconstructed” 
Southern states. Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, a young 
Norwegian who has resided in this country of late 
years, has written in English clear and beautiful 
stories of his native land, of which Gunnar, a Norse 
Romance is the chief. In fiction, as in poetry, the 
number of recent female authors of merit is large. 
Mrs. Rebecca Harding Davis, the author of Mar- 
gret Howth and Waiting for the Verdict, has great 
power in the delineation of the sad and solemn 
sides of life, especially in the lower classes. Mrs. 
Richard S. Greenough’s stories have a sombre hue 
and an artistic finish. Mrs. Adeline D. T. Whit¬ 
ney’s Leslie Goldthwaite is a lovely picture of young 
girlhood, which the author has illustrated in several 
other stories. Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton’s 
Some Women’s Hearts is a collection of novelettes 
having grace and power. Mrs. Frances Hodgson 
Burnett, after publishing many short stories in the 
magazines, produced in 1877 That Lass 0’ Lowrie’s , 


AMERICAN HUMOR. 


105 


a novel of life in the Lancashire mines of England, 
having great power of plot and description, and 
remarkable for its mastery of the dialect and cus¬ 
toms of an unfamiliar region. Haworth's, Louisiana, 
and Through One Administration have shown a 
marked, though not a steady, growth in the nov¬ 
elist’s art. The last two books, and some of the 
author’s shorter stories, are descriptive of the better 
and the worse phases of Southern American life. 
Three novels by the late Mrs. Anne M. Crane 
Seemuller, of Baltimore, deserve mention for their 
morbid strength: Emily Chester, Opportunity, and 
Reginald Archer. 

24. American Humor. — There has never been 
any lack of humor in American literature, from the 
time of Richard Alsop and the Hartford wits down 
to the latest newspaper paragraphs. It has been 
individual rather than general and its rapidity of 
thought is its chief characteristic. Our lack of a 
literary centre has denied us any Punch or Klad- 
deradatsch, but as a compensation every country 
paper keeps its own clown. A really witty saying 
goes from Eastport to San Francisco, and thus a 
Seba Smith (“Major Jack Downing”), B. P. Shilla- 
ber (“ Mrs. Partington ”), or George D. Prentice is 
likely to find his public greater than his reputation, 
and his reputation more generous than his purse. 
Our later humorists have won their celebrity by the 
constant publication of longer sketches, good, bad, 


IO6 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

or indifferent, being only careful that the name go 
with the sketch, and that the sketch be individual 
enough and long Enough to keep out of the pro¬ 
miscuous limbo of popular quotation. George H. 
Derby (“John Phoenix”) was born in Massachu¬ 
setts in 1823, and graduated at West Point in 1846. 
His wit was genuine and all his own, and his Cal¬ 
ifornia sketches made delightful fun of that region 
in the gold-mining excitement of 1849. Perhaps 
his cleverest achievement was his issue of an illus¬ 
trated journal, in which the familiar little advertis¬ 
ing cuts of the daily papers were made to do duty 
in all sorts of odd fashions. Charles Farrar Browne 
(“ Artemus Ward ”) was born at Waterford, Maine, 
in 1834. His humor was of an uneven quality, and 
was often coarse ; but toward the last of his life he 
so ripened and mellowed that his popular nickname 
of “ Artemus the delicious ” was not wholly inap- * 
propriate. He first popularized misspelling in 
America, and in view of this fact we may call his 
best saying the remark that “ Chaucer was a great 
poet, but he couldn’t spell.” Browne won much 
success as a lecturer, and died in England in 1867, 
having made himself a great favorite in London, 
where he served for some time on the staff of 
Punch. Henry W. Shaw (“Josh Billings”), born 
in Massachusetts in 1818, is chiefly known as the 
writer of proverbs and aphorisms, in which wit and 
wisdom are neatly combined. They are, like 



AMERICAN HUMOR . 


10 7 


Artemus Ward’s sayings, in phonetic spelling, but 
gain nothing by their presentation in uncouth form. 
David Ross Locke was born in Vestal, Broome 
County, New York, in 1833, an d in his early years 
led a varied life as a country printer and editor. 
In i860 he began the publication of letters by 
“ Petroleum V. Nasby,” an entirely original char¬ 
acter, whose epistles became famous during the 
war, and exerted a very considerable political in¬ 
fluence. Locke is the chief political satirist of the 
time, and Nasby, whether pastor, reformer, work¬ 
ingman, or member of society, is a constant cari¬ 
cature of the ideas for which he stands. Unlike 
other national satirical humorists taking public 
affairs for their theme, Locke is facile in turning 
to the most recent questions with unabated strength 
and undimmed humor. Another humorist, writing 
during the war upon political themes, but choosing 
subjects of a more local character, and having a 
less definite purpose in his satire, was Robert H. 
Newell (“Orpheus C. Kerr”), a native of New 
York city. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (“Mark 
Twain”), like so many other humorists, first at¬ 
tracted attention in California. The Innocents 
Abroad\ a burlesque history of the absurd doings 
of a somewhat whimsical expedition which had 
really visited the Mediterranean countries, won 
thousands of readers, and Roughing It and The 
Gilded Age (with Charles Dudley Warner) were not 


108 A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 

less successful. The qualities of Mr. Clemens’s 
style are peculiar, slyness and adroitness in jesting 
being prominent, so that the reader is treated to a 
constant succession of surprises. 

25. Charles Dudley Warner is a humorist of a 
more delicate type than those just mentioned. He 
was born in Plainfield, Massachusetts, in 1829, and 
graduated at Hamilton College, in 1851. My Sum¬ 
mer in a Garden , a series of delightful sketches of 
amateur horticulture, -first made him famous. Back¬ 
log Studies , domestic and moral reflections, was less 
popular, but equally successful. Baddeck , a7id That 
Sort of Thing followed, being an account of a trip to 
the provinces of British North America. Its little 
bits of fun and humor are scattered all through the 
book, and are to be enjoyed in exact proportion to 
the reader’s own tastes. Mummies and Mos/ems, In 
the Levant, and Sauntermgs similarly, though a little 
more soberly, illuminate life in Oriental and Euro¬ 
pean countries visited by the author. In Being 
a Boy (1877) Mr. Warner draws the New England 
youngster to the life. 

26. James Parton, a native of England but long 
a resident of America, has devoted the greater part 
of his literary life to the production of biographies 
of prominent men, written after a careful collation of 
authorities, but addressed to the popular taste in 
their fluent style and attractive allusion. Aaron 
Burr, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas 




























































































THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. IO 9 

Jefferson, General Butler, and Horace Greeley have 
thus been described in volumes of considerable size, 
while a single volume has been compiled from simi¬ 
lar biographical sketches of less length. Mr. Parton 
has also edited serviceable collections of humorous 
poetry and French lyrics, and has prepared a gen¬ 
eral history of caricature and caricaturists, besides 
an elaborate life of Voltaire. 

27. Edward E. Hale, born in Boston in 1822, 
of a family well known in the literary history of that 
city, has written a large number of very readable 
and ingenious stories, of which Ten Times One is 
Ten is the longest, a tale made famous by the 
cheery motto of its hero, Harry Wadsworth. Mr. 
Hale’s short sketch of A Man without a Country is 
the most remarkable piece of verisimilitude pro¬ 
duced on this side the water. It exerted a marked 
influence in strengthening the Northern arms dur¬ 
ing the war. In Philip Nolan's Friends Mr. Hale 
has written a continuous novel of some length, 
marked by his usual cleverness of plot and phrase. 

28. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a descend¬ 
ant of one of the most ancient of Massachusetts 
families, and a Harvard graduate of 1841, is an 
essayist pure and simple, and is an especially de¬ 
lightful companion in his Out-Door Papers (1863) 
and Oldport Days (1873), volumes made up chiefly 
of articles concerning this or that phase of out-door 
life. In Atlantic Essays (1871) there is a greater 


IIO A PRIMER OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 


proportion of papers on classical or literary subjects. 
Colonel Higginson was at the head of a colored 
regiment between 1862 and 1864, having been all 
his life an active opponent of slavery. Army Life 
in a Black Regiment (1870) details his South Caro¬ 
lina experiences. In his Young Folks' History of the 
United States (1875) he presents, within small com¬ 
pass, a readable and impartial story of the growth 
of the country. Malbone (1869), a romance of New¬ 
port life, is his only novel. 

29. Miscellaneous Writers. — A few authors 
remain to be mentioned, who cannot conveniently 
be classed under any special head. Edmund 
Quincy, who was born in 1808 and died in 1877, 
was a constant contributor of unsigned articles to 
the periodical press, and wrote a forgotten but mer¬ 
itorious novel, Wensley, in 1853. He will longest 
be remembered, however, as the author of a life of 
his father, President Josiah Quincy, of Harvard. 
This biography is a thoroughly charming history of 
a man whom James Russell Lowell properly calls 
“a great public character.” James T. Fields, of 
Boston, enjoyed the acquaintance of more English 
and American authors than any other of our writers, 
and he preserved some of his entertaining remi¬ 
niscences in Yesterdays with Authors. In Under¬ 
brush (1877) are contained his lighter essays and 
sketches. His poems, though not many, were care¬ 
fully written, and are of pleasing quality. Mary 


MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS . 


Ill 


Abigail Dodge (“ Gail Hamilton ”) is the author of 
many volumes of bright essays on a great variety 
of current topics, and of First Love is Best , a com¬ 
mendable novel of modern life. John Fiske, the 
son of a brilliant litterateur of Hartford, graduated 
at Harvard in 1864 and immediately won reputation 
as a student of modern philosophy. In his Outlines 
of Cosmic Philosophy is presented a better exposition 
of the Spencerian system than one gets from a 
casual reading of Herbert Spencer himself. Myths 
and Myth-Makers is a volume in which folk-lore is 
explained according to modern scientific principles. 
In The Unsee?i World\ and other Essays are literary 
reviews and able musical criticisms. Henry Cabot 
Lodge’s Short History of the English Colonies in 
America graphically and justly describes the birth 
and growth of our colonial life, and in itself forms 
a good introduction to the study of American 
literature. 


































































































» 















































« 































INDEX 


Abbot, Ezra, 37. 

Abbott, Jacob, 71. 

Abbott, John Sebastian Cabot, 71 
Adams, Hannah, 28. 

Adams, John, 23. 

Adams, Nehemiah, 31. 

Agassiz, Louis, 85. 

Alcott, Amos Bronson, 81. 

Alcott, Louisa May, 103. 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 94. 
Alexander, Archibald, 31. 
Alexander, James Waddell, 31. 
Alexander, Joseph, 31. 

Alger, William Rounseville, 32, 
Allen, Elizabeth Akers, 98. 
Allston, Washington, 47. 
Audubon, John James, 85. 

Bacon, Delia, 84. 

Bancroft, George, 67. 

Bancroft, Hubert Howard, 85. 
Barlow, Joel, 27. 

Barnes, Albert, 37. 

Barton, Benjamin Smith, 29. 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 37. 
Beecher, Lyman, 31. 

Belknap, Jeremy, 28. 

Bellows, Henry Whitney, 31. 
Boker, George Henry, 64. 
Bowditch, Nathaniel, 84. 

Boyesen, Hjalmar Hjorth, 104. 
Bradford, William, 14. 

Bradstreet, Anne, 14. 


Brainard, John Gardiner Calkins, 
Brainerd, David, 21. 

Brewer, Thomas Mayo, 85. 
Briggs, Charles Frederick, 78. 
Brooks, Charles Timothy, 64. 
Brooks, Phillips, 37. 

Brown, Charles Brockden, 28. 
Browne, Charles Farrar, 106. 
Browne, John Ross, 71. 

Brownell, Henry Howard, 97. 
Bryant, William Cullen, 48. 
Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 104. 
Bush, George, 36. 

Bushnell, Horace, 37. 

Butler, William Allen, 65. 

Cable, George Washington, 103. 
Calhoun, John Caldwell, 66. 
Calvert, George Henry, 64. 
Carleton, William M., 94. 

Carey, Henry Charles, 85. 

Cary, Alice, 66. 

Cary, Phoebe, 66, 

Channing, William Ellery, 32. 
Channing, William Ellery, 2nd, 8t 
Child, Frances James, 84. 

Child, Lydia Maria, 83. 

Choate, Rufus, 66. 

Clarke, James Freeman, 31. 

Clay, Henry, 66. 

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne, 107. 
Conant, Thomas J., 37. 

Cooke, John Esten, 78. 


T NDEX . 


114 


Cooke, Rose Terry, 98. 

Cooper, James Fenimore, 71. 
Coues, Elliott, 85. 

Cranch, Christopher Pearse, 65. 
Cummins, Maria S., 79. 

Curtis, George William, 82. 
Cutler, Elbridge Jefferson, 97. 
Dana, James Dwight, 85. 

Dana, Richard Henry, 46. 
Dana, Richard Henry, Jr., 82. 
Davis, Rebecca Harding, 104. 
Derby, George H., 106. 

Dewey, Orville, 31. 

Dexter, Henry Martyn, 36. 
Dodge, Mary Abigail, no. 
Drake, Joseph Rodman, 44. 
Draper, John William, 87. 
Dwight, Timothy, 18. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 16. 
Eggleston, Edward, 100. 

Eliot, John, 12. 

Eliot, Samuel, 70. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 79. 
Emmons, Nathaniel, 18. 
English, Thomas Dunn, 64. 
Everett, Edward, 66. 

Fields, James Thomas, no. 
Finney, Charles G., 37. 

Fiske, John, hi. 

Folger, Peter, 15. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 18. 
Freneau, Philip, 27. 
Frothingham, Richard, 70. 
Fuller, Margaret, 83. 

Furness, Horace Howard, 84. 
Furness, William Henry, 31. 
Garrison, William Lloyd, 66. 
Gillett, Edward H., 36. 

Godwin, Parke, 71. 

Goodrich, Samuel Griswold, 83. 
Gray, Asa, 84. 

Greeley, Horace, 87. 


Greene, Albert Groton, 47. 

Greene, George Washington, 71. 
Greenough, Mrs. R. S., 104. 

Guyot, Arnold, 85. 

Hadley, James, 84. 

Haldeman, Samuel Stehman, 84. 
Hale, Edward Everett, 109. 

Hall, Charles Francis, 71. 

Hall, John, 37. 

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 45. 

Halleck, Henry Wager, 85. 

Halpine, Charles Graham, 94. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 25. 

Hardee, William J., 85. 

Harris, Miriam Coles, 79. 

Harte, Francis Bret, 92. 

Hawthorne, Julian, 101. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 74. 

Hay, John, 93. 

Hayes, Isaac Israel, 71. 

Hayne, Paul Hamilton, 97. 

Henry, Patrick, 23. 

Herbert, Henry William, 83. 

Hickok, Laurens Perseus, 35. 
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 109. 
Hildreth, Richard, 66. 

Hillard, George Stillman, 82. 
Hillhouse, James Abraham, 47. 
Hitchcock, Edward, 85. 

Hodge, Charles, 34. 

Hoffman, Charles Fenno, 64. 
Holland, Josiah Gibert, 84. 

Holmes, Abiel, 29. 

Holmes, Nathaniel, 84. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 58. 

Hooker, Thomas, 10. 

Hopkins, Mark, 35. 

Hopkins, Samuel, 18. 

Hopkinson, Francis, 27. 

Howe, Julia Ward, 97. 

Howells, William Dean, 98. 

Hughes, John, 37. 


INDEX. 


Irving, Peter, 40. 

Irving, Washington, 38. 

Irving, William, 39. 

Jackson, Helen Fiske, 98. 

James, Henry, 36. 

James, Henry, Jr., 101. 

Jay, John, 25. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 24. 

Jones, Charles Colcock, 85. 

Judd, Sylvester, 77. 

Kane, Elisha Kent, 71. 

Kennedy, John Pendleton, 78. 
Kent, James, 84. 

Key, Francis Scott, 47. 

Kimball, Richard Burleigh, 78. 
King, Thomas Starr, 82. 

Kirk, John Foster, 70. 

Knox, Thomas W., 71. 

Lanier, Sidney, 97. 

Larcom, Lucy, 98. 

Lathrop, George Parsons, 97. 
Ledyard, John, 29. 

Leland, Charles Godfrey, 94. 

Lewis, Tayler, 36. 

Lippincott, Sara Jane, 79. 

Locke, David Ross, 107. 

Lodge, Henry Cabot, in. 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 50. 
Loomis, Elias, 84. 

Lossing, Benson John, 71. 

Lowell, James Russell, 60. 
Madison, James, 25. 

March, Francis Andrew, 84. 

Marsh, George Perkins, 84. 

Marsh, James, 35. 

Marshall, John, 29. 

Mather, Cotton, 10. 

Mather, Increase, 10. 

Mayo, William Starbuck, 78. 
McClellan, George Brinton, 85. 
McClintock, John, 37. 

McClurg, James, 27. 


115 

McCosh, James, 34. 

Melville, Herman, 78. 

Miller, Joaquin, 92. 

Mitchell, Donald Grant, 83. 

Mitchill, Samuel Latham, 29. 

Morris, George P., 64. 

Morton, Nathaniel, 14. 

Motley, John Lothrop, 69, 

Moulton, Louise Chandler, 104. 
Muhlenberg, William Augustus, 47. 
Neal, John, 77. 

Newcomb, Simon, 84. 

Newell, Robert Henry, 107. 

Nordhoff, Charles, 82. 

Norton, Andrews, 31. 

Norton, Charles Eliot, 82. 

Otis, James, 23. 

Paine, Robert Treat, Jr., 27. 

Paine, Thomas, 26. 

Palfrey, John Gorham, 68. 

Tark, Edwards Amasa, 31. 

Parker, Theodore, 32. 

Parkman, Francis, 70. 

Parsons, Theophilus, 36. 

Parsons, Thomas William, 65. 

Parton, James, 108. 

Parton, Sarah Willis, 79. 

Paulding, James Kirke, 43. 

Payne, John Howard, 47. 

Peabody, Andrew Preston, 32. 

Peirce, Benjamin, 84. 

Percival, James Gates, 64. 

Perry, Nora, 98. 

Perry, William Stevens, 36. 

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 102. 

Phillips, Wendell, 66. 

Piatt, John James, 96. 

Piatt, Sarah Morgan Bryan, 96. 
Pinkney, Edward Coate, 64. 

Poe, Edgar Allan, 63. 

Porter, Noah, 35. 

Prentice, George D., 105. 


n6 


INDEX. 


Prescott, William Hickling, 68. 
Preston, Margaret Junkin, 98. 
Prince, Thomas, 22. 

Punchard, George, 36. 

Quincy, Edmund, no. 

Quincy, Josiah, Jr., 23. 

Ramsay, David, 28. 

Read, Thomas Buchanan, 97. 

Reed, Henry, 83. 

Robinson, Edward, 83. 

Rumford, Count, 29. 

Rush, Benjamin, 29. 

Sands, Robert Charles, 49. 

Sandys, George, 9. 

Saxe, John Godfrey, 90. 

Schaff, Philip, 36. 

Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, 84. 
Schuyler, Eugene, 71. 

Scott, Winfield, 88. 

Sedgwick, Catherine Maria, 79. 
Seemuller, Anne Crane, 105. 

Sewall, Samuel, 22. 

Seward, William Henry, 66. 

Shaw, Henry W., 106. 

Shedd, William Greenough Thayer, 
36. 

Sherman, William Tecumseh, 88. 
Shillaber, B. P., 105. 

Sigourney, Lydia Huntley, 66. 
Simms, William Gilmore, 78. 

Smith, John, 14. 

Smith, Seba, 105. 

Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides, 
84. 

Spalding, Martin John, 37. 

Sparks, Jared, 70. 

Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 104. 
Sprague, Charles, 47. 

Squier, Ephraim George, 71. 
Stanley, Henry M., 71. 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 95. 
Stephens, Alexander Hamilton, 87. 


Stephens, John Lloyd, 71. 

Stevens, Abel, 36. 

Stith, William, 21. 

Stoddard, Richard Henry, 90. 
Story, William Wetmore, 65. 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 79. 
Street, Alfred Billings, 65. 

Stuart, Moses, 31. 

Sumner, Charles, 66. 

Taylor, Bayard, 89. 

Taylor, Nathaniel William, 37. 
Taylor, William Mackergo, 37. 
Thaxter, Celia, 98. 

Thompson, Benjamin, 29. 
Thoreau, Henry David, 80. 
Ticknor, George, 82. 

Timrod, Henry, 97. 

Todd, John, 31. 

Torrey, John, 84. 

Tourgee, Albion Winegar, 104. 
Trowbridge, John Townsend, 91. 
Trumbull, John, 27. 

Tuckerman, Henry Theodore, 84. 
Upham, Thomas Cogswell, 35. 

, Verplanck, Gulian Crommelin, 49. 
Very, Jones, 81. 

Ward, Nathaniel, 14. 

Ware, Henry, 31. 

Ware, Henry, Jr., 31. 

Ware, William, 77. 

Warner, Anna, 79. 

Warner, Charles Dudley, 108. 
s, Warner, Susan, 79. 

Washington, George, 24. 
Wayland, Francis, 36. 

Webster, Daniel, 66. 

Webster, Noah, 84. 

Wheatley, Phillis, 27. 

Wheaton, Henry, 84. 

Whipple, Edwin Percy, 82. 
White, Richard Grant, 84. 
Whitman, Walt, 91. 


INDEX. 


ii 7 


Whitney, Adeline D. Train, 104. 
Whitney, William Dwight, 84. 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 55. 
Wigglesworth, Michael, 15. 
Wilde, Richard Henry, 47. 
Wilkes, Charles, 71. 

Williams, Roger, 13. 

Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 64. 
Willson, Forceythe, 97. 

Wilson, Alexander, 29. 

Wilson, Henry, 87. 


Winthrop, John, 14. 

Winthrop, Robert Charles, 66. 
Winthrop, Theodore, 100. 

Wirt, William, 29. 

Woods, Leonard, 31. 
Woodworth, Samuel, 47. 
Woolman, John, 21. 

Woolsley, Theodore Dwight, 85. 
Worcester, Joseph Emerson, 84. 
Worcester, Samuel, 31. 





MODERN CLASSICS. 


A library of thirty-two volumes, containing many of 
the best complete Poems, Essays, and Sketches in 
modern Literature. Including selections from the 
most celebrated authors of England and America, 
and translations of several masterpieces by Con¬ 
tinental writers. 

The contents of the different volumes are as follows: 

1. Evangeline. ) 

The Courtship of Miles Standish. > Longfellow. 
Favorite Poems. ) 

2. Culture, Behavior, Beauty. ) 

Books, Art, Eloquence. > Emerson. 

Power, Wealth, Illusions. ; 

3. Nature. ) 

Love, Friendship, Domestic Life. > Emerson. 

Success, Greatness, Immortality. ) 

4. Snow-bound. ) 

The Tent on the Beach. > Whittier. 

Favorite Poems. ) 

5. The Vision of Sir Launfal. ) 

The Cathedral. ? Lowell. 

Favorite Poems. ) 

6. In and Out of Doors with Charles Dickens. Fields. 

A Christmas Carol. Dickens. 

Barry Cornwall and some of his Friends. Fields. 

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Favorite Poems. Wordsworth. 

8 - £ n „t:U F ~ 

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Thackeray. 

John Leech. 

10. Enoch Arden, i 

In Memoriam. > Tennyson. 

Favorite Poems. ) (Continued on next page) 


| Dr. John Brown. 


/ 


MODERN CLASSICS. 


11. The Princess. ) 

Maud. > Tennyson. 

Locksley Hall. ) 

12. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. An Essay, by E. C. Stedman, 
Lady Geraldine’s Courtship. Mrs. Browning. 

Favorite Poems. Robert Browning. 

13. Goethe. An Essay, by Carlyle. 

The Tale. 1 Goethe 

Favorite Poems, j Lr0ETHE * 

14. Schiller. An Essay, by Carlyle. 

The Lay of the Bell, and Fridolin. ) c CHIL , FR 
Favorite Poems. ) ** 

15. Burns. An Essay, by Carlyle. 

Favorite Poems. Burns. 

Favorite Poems. Scott. 

16. Byron. An Essay, by Macaulay. 

Favorite Poems. Byron. 

Favorite Poems. Hood. 

17. Milton. An Essay, by Macaulay. 

L’Allegro, II Penseroso. Milton. 

Elegy in a Country Churchyard, etc. Gray. 

18. The Deserted Village, etc. Goldsmith. 

Favorite Poems. Cowper. 

Favorite Poems. Mrs. Hemans. 

19. Characteristics. Carlyle. 

Favorite Poems. Shelley. 

The Eve of St. Agnes, etc. Keats. 

20. An Essay on Man. ) p 
Favorite Poems. ( * 

Favorite Poems. Moore. 

21. The Choice of Books. Carlyle. 

Essays from Elia. Lamb. 

Favorite Poems. Southey. 

22. 



(Continued on next page.) 


2 3 - 


24. 


25. 


26. 


27. 


28. 


29. 


3 °- 


31 - 


32 - 


MODERN CLASSICS. 

The Pleasures of Hope. } 

Favorite Poems. f Campbell. 

Pleasures of Memory. Rogers. 

longs! 5 ' \ Shakespeare. 

Favorite Poems. Leigh Hunt. 

Favorite Poems. Herbert. 

Favorite Poems. Collins, Dryden, Marvell. 
Favorite Poems Herrick. 

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Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers. Aytoun. 

Favorite Poems. Charles Kingsley. 

Favorite Poems. Owen Meredith. 

Favorite Poems. Stedman. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. An Essay, by Fields. 

Tales of the White Hills. ) 

Legends of New England. \ Ha ™ thorne. 

Oliver Cromwell. Carlyle. 

A Virtuoso’s Collection. ) 

Legends of the Province House. ) Uawthorne. 

The Story of Iris. 


Holmes. 


Lowell. 


Favorite Poems. 

Health. Dr. John Brown. 

My Garden Acquaintance. 

A Moosehead Journal. 

The Farmer’s Boy. Bloomfield. 
A Day’s Pleasure. 

Buying a Horse. 

Flitting. 

The Mouse. 

A Year in a Venetian Palace. 


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